


Road to Forever

by 13luckystars



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Attacks, Chaptered, Complete, M/M, Magic!Stiles, Mates, Mentions of past panic attacks, Nudity, Some possibly gruesome scenes, Stiles gains some friends in his travels, Traveling, alpha!Derek, mating ceremony, some OCs, temporary major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 04:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 68,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1537673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13luckystars/pseuds/13luckystars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it becomes too dangerous in Beacon Hills for Stiles to stay, he leaves so that he can keep his family, friends, and the other citizens safe. Along the way on his journey that has no destination, he meets new people and finds out things about himself he never knew before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Years before, the small town of Beacon Hills was safe. The citizens of the town never felt like they needed to worry about crime any more than any other small town, because it just didn’t happen often. If there was ever a report of a murder, it was being told on the televised news and was from one of the neighboring towns. The students of the local high school might have participated in illegal activity like drug use and underage drinking, but no one died. Everyone there felt safe, and then the animal attacks started.

 With the first dead body found in the woods, people started taking every necessary precaution to keep them safe. They had no way of knowing if the psychopath who had murdered the young woman and cut her in half was still in Beacon Hills, or if they had left. And they definitely had no way to know that the murderer had been a mountain lion. Until the police released a statement, people didn’t know what to expect. They stocked their houses with weapons, and locked their doors at night. When there was a knock at the door, no one would immediately open the door anymore. People were more cautious than they had had to be in a long time. All because a “mountain lion” showed up in their small town and killed Laura Hale.

Immediately following the death of Laura Hale, more people were being killed. Every time a new person died, they seemed to have the same scratches and bites along their bodies, helping keep the image of the mountain lion attacks. After Laura came a school bus driver, found dead in the back of a school bus, then a video store clerk, found dead in the video store. The citizens of Beacon Hills felt less than safe following all of these attacks.

At parent-teacher conference night, the animal was finally seen in the parking lot of the high school, and killed by Chris Argent. But that didn’t end the attacks. After the animal was killed, two men were found dead in the woods, and the police gave the same excuse for death. The citizens started talking about the possibility that there were more mountain lions in the area, even though the animals had never been seen in Beacon Hills prior to the start of the attacks.

Within a few months, the attacks stopped, and it seemed like the town would be safe again. The people started saying that those last two attacks had been a retaliation done by another mountain lion, and then that one had left, fearing the same end that the first one had met. For a while, the town went back to a normal state, where the citizens weren’t as cautious when they left their houses.

Then another wave of attacks happened.

This time everything started when Mr. Lahey was found in an alleyway. This line of attacks looked like they had definitely been done by a human being, and that threw the town into a bigger frenzy than the animal attacks. What the police didn’t understand was the cuts that the victims had on the back of their necks. They hadn’t been the cause of death, but the cops knew they had to have had a meaning.

After Mr. Lahey came the local mechanic, found crushed the death under a car that he had been working on, then there was an attack at the local gay club, The Jungle, that had not resulted in any deaths but had left seven people paralyzed, then a young woman was found dead at a rave, and then the entire night shift at the police department were found dead.

This time between attacks there wasn’t a break. When the paralyzing attacks ended, large groups of teenagers were found dead in the woods, then people who couldn’t swim started being found in the lake on the edge of town, and then more people seemed to be taken right from the street and then wound up being found in the woods, scratches and bite marks littering their skin, and their throats tore out.

The citizens of Beacon Hills didn’t know what to think of all of these attacks, but the more they happened, the more people wanted to move away from the town.

…

At the beginning of the attacks, a teenage boy named Scott McCall was bitten by whatever was doing all of the attacks. He had sworn to his friends that it was just an animal bite, but he hadn’t seen what had done it, and his best friend, Stiles Stilinski, didn’t seem to agree with the idea. When Scott started showing superhuman abilities, hearing things that people shouldn’t have been able to hear, smelling things other people couldn’t smell, running faster than anyone else, and being able to lift things that normal humans couldn’t, Stiles’s theory seemed more likely than a simple animal bite.

Scott McCall had been bitten by a werewolf, and then turned into one. The things that he liked the most about it were that he didn’t seem to have asthma anymore, and he was better at lacrosse than he had ever been before. Everything else he pretty much hated with a passion, especially when he and Stiles figured out that they needed to find out what was killing the citizens of Beacon Hills, and do their best to kill it.

And then when they found out that the werewolf killing people had been Laura Hale’s uncle, Peter Hale, they knew that it wouldn’t stop there. When the next creature came they fought it and found out that somehow Jackson Whittemore had become a monster and was being controlled. Then they had to fight the witches that were killing large groups of teenagers, then they had to fight the merpeople that were luring people who couldn’t swim into the lake, and then they had to try and work out what was snatching people off the streets and killing them.

“You being bitten by a werewolf was probably the worst thing that could’ve ever happened to me,” Stiles whispered to Scott as they quietly walked through the woods, attempting to find where the latest body had been found.

“How was it the worst thing for you?” Scott replied, stopping in his tracks to give his friend an incredulous look.

“Hey at least you got a good relationship out of this, I’m still hopelessly single and a virgin.” Scott made a look of distaste and Stiles rolled his eyes. “Oh calm down. Anyway it’s worse for me because I could be doing a lot of other, more fun, things with my Friday nights but instead I’m wandering around the woods with you, and our other friends are wandering around here too.”

“I’m sorry this is such an inconvenience,” Scott said, walking again, after letting out a huff of annoyance and rolling his eyes.

“You should be. I don’t want to look around the woods for the latest creature.”

“How’s your research going anyway?”

Stiles shrugged. “Lydia and I have been working together, pouring over old books and the internet, and we think it’s a rogue werewolf. Either one or a group of them. We’re leaning toward a group of them right now.”

“How can they be rogue if they’re a pack?”

“That’s the thing. They aren’t a pack. None of them are alphas first of all, and they just kind of bound together, they have no leader and no one to keep the group together. They probably have a very loose relationship with each other, and probably want to rip each other’s throats out. We think eventually they will kill each other off.”

“So if we wait this will end?”

“Eventually, but innocent people will keep dying.”

The two let out long, resigned sighs at the same time.

“You didn’t happen to get any information about this from your dad did you?” Scott asked after a few more minutes of wandering.

“No, even though he knows about all the supernatural stuff, he’s still reluctant to tell me stuff about his cases because he isn’t supposed to. Sometimes I can get him to if I bring him a big greasy burger, but I don’t like doing that too often.”

Scott’s phone started ringing in his phone, the sound resounding in the silence, and he pulled it out, giving the flashlight to Stiles, and answered it. By the happy look on his face, Stiles knew exactly who it was.

“Hey Allison, how’s it going?”

Stiles couldn’t hear the other half of the conversation, but by the little fall Scott’s grin did, he figured that the other group wasn’t having any better luck than they were.

Scott took care of his phone. “I guess we should just go back home? We could go to yours?”

“All of us?”

Scott shrugged.

Their group, Stiles, Scott, Lydia, Allison, Jackson, and Danny, all ended up at Stiles’s house, crashing on the living room floor.

…

A few weeks later, after two more attacks, Stiles and Lydia finally decided for sure that the group doing all of the killings were a group of rogue werewolves. The werewolves of their group had found where the group was staying and had sent Stiles’s dad and the rest of the police department to take them in. Most of the police had had no idea that they were going after a bunch of werewolves.

When the group had been taken in, Stiles had snuck into one of the interrogation rooms where one of the werewolves were waiting for an interrogator.

“Why did you guys come to Beacon Hills?” Stiles asked, sitting down in the seat across from the werewolf.

When the group had been found, they had all looked grimy, like they hadn’t had showers or clean clothes in a while. This werewolf was no exception. He looked cleaner than he had the first time, but his hair was too long, and matted in some places. The clothes he was wearing were torn and covered in blood. Stiles had to try very hard to keep his emotions steady so that the werewolf wouldn’t pick up on how worried he was. No one would know he was in there if the werewolf decided to attack him.

The werewolf ignored Stiles’s question. “Just because you managed to get around being caught by us, doesn’t mean that you won’t be captured by the alphas.”

“What do you mean? What alphas?”

“If you had just come with us, we would have taken you to the alphas, and this would all be over. Instead you have managed to make the job much harder. You should have let us take you.”

“What do the alphas want with me?”

The werewolf laughed. “How do you not know?”

“How do I not know what?”

The werewolf could tell that Stiles was getting frustrated, and that just seemed to egg him on. He barked out another laugh. “You might want to get away from your nice small town Stiles.”

“How do you know my name?”

“We were sent to get you, why wouldn’t we know your name?”

“Why do I need to leave?”

The werewolf raised an eyebrow and a grin took over his face. “When the alphas come, they won’t start out by killing people from town. We did that because we were hungry, the alphas won’t be, they won’t need to kill anyone off. They might kill your little rag tag group that you call a pack.”

“Why would they kill my pack?” Stiles asked, hysteria marking the edge of his words.

“Because your pack will try to protect you. The alphas want you for what makes you special Stiles. When they come, they will immediately find you. The only way anyone will know that they were here is that you will be missing. They won’t leave a blood trail like we did. I told you, they won’t try to kill people from town first, they will go after you and they will take you away. Just like they wanted us to do.”

Before Stiles could react to what the werewolf said, the actual interrogator walked into the room. All she did was sigh when she saw Stiles.

“What are you doing in here Stiles?” she asked, giving him a little push to get him out of the seat.

The werewolf was smirking at him, and Stiles couldn’t help but stare, his mouth hanging open in shock.

“I was just leaving.”

Stiles practically ran right out of the room and right into his dad’s office.

“I’m not safe,” he said, causing his dad to put down the case file he was looking over and look up at Stiles.

“What do you mean?”

“I talked to the werewolf that Lisa is interrogating right now.”

“You snuck into the interrogation room? Why am I not surprised?”

“Okay, getting past that, he told me that I should have just let the rogues take me because now the alphas are going to come and they are going to take me.”

“Why do they want to take you?”

“I don’t know!” Stiles exclaimed, flailing his arms around a bit. “He said there was something special about me that the alphas want! I need to get out of town!”

“Won’t the alphas just come to town anyway?”

“He said that they don’t plan on killing anyone.”

The Sheriff sighed. “Okay, I guess we need to get you out of town.”

…

Stiles was in his jeep, driving away from Beacon Hills. Saying goodbye to his friends had been hard, and saying goodbye to his dad had been even harder. This was only a temporary thing, but he couldn’t help but think that his dad was going to be spending his time alone in their empty, quiet house. He could only hope that at least Scott would pay him visits sometimes, and that Mrs. McCall would make sure that his dad took care of himself.

Every once in a while Stiles would look in his rearview mirror, and think about turning back. He would see the outline of his home, and have the urge to go back to his dad and his friends. He knew he couldn’t, and that they would just send him back again, but he really wanted to.

From the passenger seat, his phone seemed to mock him. If the alphas were going to torture anyone close to him, he had to make it look like he left and that no one from home knew about it. This whole thing was killing Stiles inside, but he knew he had to do it.


	2. Chapter 2

Within the first day of his journey, Stiles figured out that his dad was putting money into his bank account. Being Stiles, he hadn’t thought to grab any cash on his quick dash out of the house, so when his stomach started grumbling unhappily, Stiles had mentally cursed himself for not thinking of grabbing some. Luckily, he had had his ATM card in his pocket when he had left. He had gone to the first ATM he saw, thinking of how much money he was going to drain on this trip, and the first thing he noticed had been that there was more money in his account than there had been when he had last made a deposit. He couldn’t help but smile at the fact that his dad was looking out for him, even if he was supposed to make it seem like he didn’t know where Stiles was, and didn’t know where Stiles was going.

Stiles had only been driving for a few hours, but he was already feeling lonely. He was used to being able to ramble about anything and everything to someone. He was used to being able to pick up his phone when he wanted to talk to someone and either text or call them. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had the option to call someone, but because he knew that option was not there, he felt a bit miserable. If it had just been a few hour drive where he knew he would be talking to his dad or Scott or someone when he was done, he would have been fine. There would have been a million things that he thought of along the way that he would want to talk about, and he would focus on making a mental list so that he could tell someone when he saw them. Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone anything, he just paid enough attention to driving so that he wouldn’t get into an accident and he wouldn’t get pulled over, and then he let his mind wander a bit. He had nothing to pay attention to, and nothing to think about to keep his mind occupied. Of course that meant that he was sitting in the driver’s seat, driving down back roads, thinking about how much he wanted to go home and how much he wanted to see his dad and his friends.

About three hours into his journey, he turned the radio on and found a station that wasn’t full of static, and was one that he would actually listen to. The music seemed to give him something else to think about, even if it was only for a little while.

Stiles stopped at a small gas station when he noticed that his jeep was running low on fuel.

The moment he got out of the car, he was hit by a wave of paranoid thoughts. What if there was a werewolf trailing him? What if he hadn’t left the threat in Beacon Hills, but had actually just brought it with him? What if the moment he started getting gas, a werewolf decided to jump him? He didn’t know what the “special” thing about him was, and he was worried that whatever it was, was just going to make more werewolves attack him. Stiles couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t just hiding from the alpha werewolves that were on their way to Beacon Hills, but every other werewolf too.

The paranoid thoughts were really not welcome since all they did was make Stiles watch over his back, and look carefully around at his surroundings, just in case.

He made it out of the small gas station just fine, and decided to skip that town. Instead, he drove on to the next one, and started looking for somewhere to spend the night.

In the next town, Stiles found a nice little, unsuspecting, bed and breakfast. The building looked like a large house. Everything was painted white, the roof, the shutters, the walls, everything. With the white building, Stiles thought that it would be dirty, since white gets dirty so fast, but the closer he got to the building, the more he noticed the lack of dirt. He thought that someone must take a lot of time to keep the outside looking pristine.

Stiles walked up the wide sidewalk, and walked up the stairs onto the small porch. On the porch were pots of beautiful flowers of various colors, in full bloom. Each pot was put into a certain place, and looked like they were well kept.

Walking up to the door, Stiles felt like he was invading someone’s personal space. He felt like the moment he opened the door, he was going to see a small family sitting down to dinner. Even though there had been signs near the road saying that the place was a bed and breakfast and that they welcomed new, unexpected visitors, Stiles still felt weird. Was he supposed to knock? Or could he just walk right in? What was he supposed to expect when he walked in?

Stiles quickly made his decision and opened the door. The first thing that greeted him was a small table and a young woman sitting behind it. She wasn’t dressed like a receptionist at a fancy hotel would be dressed. This woman was sitting there in a pair of light blue, faded, capris and had a light blue plaid shirt that was hanging open over a white tank top. Her brown hair was pulled into a pony tail, and she had a bright smile on her face.

“Are you looking to rent a room?” she asked,  the smile reaching up to her deep, brown eyes, and adding an extra sparkle that seemed to dance as she looked Stiles up and down.

“Uh yeah, I think so,” Stiles said, acting uncharacteristically shy.

The girl laughed. “You think so? You’re not sure?”

“I’m sure, I just don’t know what the protocol is here.”

The girl smiled at him. “No problem. Why don’t you go get your stuff, which I’m assuming you left in your car, and I’ll take you up to one of the rooms?”

“Okay,” Stiles said, nodding, and turned back toward the door.

Stiles quickly grabbed his duffle bag that had a pair of sweats, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, some underwear and socks, and all of his toiletries out of his car. In no time he was walking back into the house and being shown to his room.

The girl opened the door, waved him inside, and handed the room key to him. “This is where you’ll be staying for however long you need to. Sometimes we have people who stay the night, some stay for a week, or some stay for a few months. As long as you have a way to pay, you can continue to use the room.” The girl paused and watched as Stiles put his duffle bag down next to the small bed and then gingerly sat down on the bed like it was going to break. “Breakfast starts at eight and runs until eleven. It’ll be an all you can eat buffet. If you need anything, just call downstairs or walk down there. It doesn’t matter. Goodnight sir.”

With that, she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

For the next few hours, Stiles sat in his room and did research. He was trying to use everything he had heard from the group of omegas and even things that him and his friends had put into a list of assumptions. There was so much more that could be interpreted as fact or fiction on the Internet, and almost none of it was helping. Some of the stuff he found was in different languages and he didn't trust Google Translate to translate it correctly. That just made him wish Lydia was there. And that wasn’t the first time he had wished desperately for one of his friends. He was starting to think he should just make a list of everything that made him miss his dad and his friends. Then maybe when he got back he could tell them all these things and have one mushy reunion with everyone. 

Stiles was sat on the bed in his room, with his head against the backboard and his legs trailing down the bed. His laptop was balanced on his thighs. The minute the girl had left him alone earlier he had gotten into the shower, soaking and thinking about the situation. When he was done he didn't bother to get back into his jeans, even though it was only four o'clock in the afternoon, but had gotten into his sweatpants instead. He preferred to be as comfortable as possible when he had research to do. 

At about eight o'clock that night, there was a knock on the door. He had figured that it was just going to be someone who worked at the bed and breakfast, even though he didn't know why they would be coming to him at this time. He had moved his laptop from his lap and walked across the room. Stiles hadn't bothered to check to see who it was, and just opened the door. 

When he opened it there was a man standing in front of him, looking down at Stiles with a predatory look in his eye and a wide smile plastered to his face. The guy was wearing khakis and a green polo, giving off the idea that he had a lot of money. His hair was done in a way that looked like he had just gotten out of bed, but Stiles knew that the look had probably taken about an hour. The guy looked to be in his mid-twenties. 

"Hello," the guy said, leaning against the doorframe. "How are you?"

Stiles looked the guy up and down, trying to assess what he could possibly want. "I'm fine, how are you?" Stiles asked hesitantly. 

"I would be much better if you would let me come in, we could talk for a while?" The guy’s voice was hopeful but his request sent warnings straight to Stiles’s brain.

"I think it'd be better if you stayed there."

"Why would you say that? What do you think I am going to do to you?" The minute the words were fully out of the guys mouth, his teeth sharpened just so and his eyes briefly flashed red. Stiles didn't know exactly what this guy was going to do to him, or even what his own brain thought the guy was going to do, but he figured it had to do with whatever he was. 

"What do you want?" Stiles asked, wishing now that he had put his jeans back on since he had a knife in the pocket. 

The guy pushed forward a little. "Just to talk to you."

"I don't know you."

"Well my name is Brian, now that you know that, why don't we get to know each other a little better?" Brian started flexing his fingers where he had one hand wrapped around the doorframe. Where the nails should have been, there were claws. 

"I would really rather you stay out there." Stiles’s head was reeling. He had no idea how to get out if this situation. There was no way that he would be able to outrun Brian and unless he brought the guy into the room, there was no way that he could get his knife without Brian noticing.

With a sigh, Stiles knew what he had to do. "Okay, why don't you come in?" Stiles plastered a smile on his face, hoping it came off inviting and maybe a little flirtatious, and not disgusted and terrified. 

Brian's smile seemed to widen. "I'm glad you saw it my way."

Stiles walked over to his bag and started rummaging around, trying to discreetly get his pocket knife out of his pocket without Brian noticing. He was also trying to pack everything up so that he could run for it when he got the chance. 

"So why did you come to see me?" Stiles said, turning around after successfully getting his knife. 

"Your smell is very alluring. I could smell you from my room, and I couldn't resist," Brian said, licking his lips. 

"What was so alluring about it?" Stiles asked, smiling at the guy again and slowly moving closer, but hoping that he would say what he had liked about Stiles’s scent and give Stiles the answers that he needed. 

Brian lay down on the bed, leaning back and putting his hands behind his head. "I'm not sure, but as soon as I smelled you, I knew I had to mate you."

Stiles struggled to keep a straight face, but was freaking out on the inside. What did this guy mean? He wanted to mate Stiles?

Stiles got a bit closer and walked up the side of the bed, making it look like he was ready to have sex with the guy, but just when Stiles got to Brian's hips, he pulled out his pocket knife and stabbed Brian's thigh. He quickly grabbed his bag that had everything in it, sliced at both of Brian's ankles, and ran. 

When he got to the desk he threw some cash at the woman behind it and ran out. At that point he didn't care how much he had left, he just knew he had to get out to his jeep and down the road before Brian caught up. 

Knowing that Brian was an alpha, Stiles had no idea how he had managed to get away. 

…

After the alpha scare, Stiles decided he would have to take more precautionary measures if he was going to stay at hotels and bed and breakfasts. He couldn’t have a repeat of his only night at the little place.

Without carrying a better weapon, there was only one thing that Stiles could think of that would help him defend himself against werewolves: mountain ash. Back home, Stiles had an impressive stash of the black powder in the back of his closet. There, the stuff was ready to be grabbed and used whenever the situation called for it. The thing was that Stiles hadn’t thought to bring any on his trip. When he had been packing, he hadn’t thought that whatever it was that made him special was something that other werewolves could smell. None of his friends back home had said a single word to him about his scent, but maybe they had assumed it was normal since that had always been how he smelled. Now he was worried that maybe not knowing exactly what he was wanted for was going to be more dangerous than any of them had anticipated. If it was something that made other werewolves take notice of him, then there was no way Stiles was going to make it through this alone.

So since Stiles didn’t have any mountain ash with him, he decided he would have to contact Deaton. And since he wasn’t supposed to call anyone just in case the alphas could trace the calls back, Stiles knew he was going to have to do this by snail mail.

Stiles wasn’t exactly sure on how long it would take for his letter to get to Deaton, or how long it would take for the mountain ash to get back to the hotel, but this was the only defense he could think of. Because of that, he would have to be patient and be willing to wait for the package. Of course the one thing that he needed to do was one thing that he wasn’t very good at.

When he had first realized that he needed mountain ash and he would have to get it through the mail, the first thing he had thought of was if the hotel would actually get his package. Since Stiles had never been in a situation where he had needed a package to be taken to a hotel, he didn’t know if that was even a thing hotels did. When he asked the front desk, he found out that it was. The little nod that the receptionist had given him while not looking away from her computer had been one of the most relieving things for Stiles.

As soon as Stiles got to his room he set about to get his letter around. He had had to look up the address for the Beacon Hills’s animal clinic online since he didn’t have that information stored in his memory, and had filled out the envelope first while he had had the address up. After that he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and sat down to write out the actual letter.

_Dear Dr. Deaton,_

_Hopefully you are able to figure out who this is by the end of the letter since I’m not supposed to contact any of you guys. Once you read this please burn it so no one can trace this to anyone. Hopefully that will work. Now I’m writing to you because recently while staying somewhere an alpha came up to me telling me that he was able to smell me from his room and could not stay away. I am getting the feeling that whatever the alphas want me for is something that other werewolves can smell and also want me for. I still don’t know what it is, and I hope you guys are getting more information and hopefully coming close to an answer. Anyway, the alpha wanted me to leave with him or something, but I managed to get away. If you could, I would like it very much if you would send a jar, or more, of mountain ash to the address that this letter came from. I’m hoping that will keep some of the nasties away._

_Thank you._

Stiles left the letter unsigned and put the piece of paper into an envelope that was made out with the address of his current hotel and the address of the Beacon Hill’s animal clinic. Now all he could do was wait for Deaton to send the much needed mountain ash.


	3. Chapter 3

The longer it took Deaton to send the jar of mountain ash, the more paranoid Stiles became. It had only been two days since Stiles had sent his letter, but he was already staying in his room as often as he could and looking at every person with suspicion. He was worried that if he let his guard down, another alpha werewolf was going to show up at the door to his room and he was going to go through the Brian situation all over again. And if that happened, it would take even longer for him to get the mountain ash since he would have to go to a different hotel.

On the third day, Stiles got a call from the hotel lobby telling him that a package had arrived for him. The minute he had hung up the phone he ran out of the room, all the way down the hall, and impatiently bounced around in the elevator as he made his way down to the lobby. Once he had gotten there, it had taken all of his restraint not to run to the desk and demand his package. Instead, he calmly walked over and waited patiently for the man behind the desk to hand him the brown cardboard box.

Stiles took the box and cradled it against his chest in almost a loving way. Until then he hadn’t thought about how much of a mess he was about to make in his hotel room. He knew there was no way he could let the hotel cleaning staff see the black powder spread around the room, so he would have to clean it up before they saw it. If they came into his room everyday though, he would be using the mountain ash at an extremely fast rate. There was no way he could clean the stuff up every day and send for Deaton to send him more. Even the vet only had so much of the stuff.

“Can I ask you a question?” Stiles asked the man at the desk after standing in front of him for a few minutes, trying to figure out what he was going to do about cleaning the room up.

“Of course.”

“How often does the cleaning staff have to come into the rooms to clean up?”

The guy gave Stiles a quizzical look for a moment before replacing it with another smile. “Well they don’t have to come into your room every day since you’re going to be with us for a while. When would you like them to come in?”

“Once a week maybe? Later on in the day, on Fridays?”

“That can definitely be arranged.”

Stiles nodded politely, happy with his answer. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem, sir.”

With that, Stiles walked away, back up to his room, still cradling the box of mountain ash. Now that he knew when the cleaning staff would be visiting his room, he would be able to clean up the mountain ash himself. He also would only have to clean the powder up once a week, so it would take longer to go through the entire jar. The only problem was that he didn’t currently have a way to clean up the mess himself. When he had been packing for this trip, he hadn’t been thinking that he would be cleaning the rooms he would be staying in, so he hadn’t thought to bring anything to clean up with. Really though, why would he be likely to think to bring a small, portable vacuum cleaner when he was going to be staying in hotels and the like?

Once Stiles got the box up to his room, and had removed the jar from inside, he spread a line of the stuff around the room, creating the protective boarder that he would need. Once the two ends met, no werewolves would be able to get into the room unless he broke the seal. There was no doubt in Stiles’s mind that he would not be breaking that seal until Friday afternoon.

The next thing Stiles did was go out to buy a portable vacuum cleaner. The one he had picked was nothing special, all it did was vacuum, and that was all Stiles needed it for.

When Stiles had gone out to get his vacuum cleaner, he had noticed a small diner nestled in between other, larger, more thriving businesses. The parking lot of the diner had been packed the first time Stiles had passed it, and was still packed when Stiles was heading back to the hotel. Deciding to check out the diner hadn’t been a very tough decision for Stiles to make. He had looked over at the building, thought about how he hadn’t yet ate since having breakfast that morning, and then his stomach grumbled.

Stiles liked that when he walked in, he got to sit wherever he wanted, and could pick somewhere that a lot of people were sitting around, or he could sit in a spot where he was less likely to accidentally, or purposefully, overhear a conversation. He liked the large windows that covered two of the walls, and he liked all of the small signs that were scattered around the room. The signs gave him something to read, and a lot of them were pretty interesting. 

When a waitress finally came over to Stiles’s table, she asked him what he wanted with a cheerful voice and a smile on her face, like she wanted to be there. Stiles knew there was a possibility that this woman hated being there and was putting up a front, but he liked it anyway. 

After ordering, and eventually eating, Stiles walked out of the small place with a smile on his face and a full stomach. He immediately decided that he would be going back there multiple times over the span of time he stayed in the same town. 

…

Even knowing that he was safe in his hotel room, Stiles was still a little antsy. He needed something to do and just going out to eat and watching late night television wasn't enough. He wanted to use his time researching, but he didn't know what he was looking for, so he didn't know what to use for a Google search.

The only thing he could think to do was to see if the town had a bookstore, and hope that it had a section dedicated to different types of mythology and a tolerance for teenage boys sitting around and flipping through the mythology books. With a little searching, he found out that there was a bookstore, and after walking in, he found out that there was a mythology section. The last thing he had to figure out was how long he could sit and read the books before someone told him he had to leave.

At the checkout desk sat an elderly man. He wasn't the kind of man that Stiles would expect to work in a bookstore though. This guy wasn't one of the frail old men, but one that looked like he spent his spare time making sure he was in shape. His hair was gray, almost a white color, and he was wearing big, blocky glasses, and had wrinkles, but even with those things, he didn't look old. There was a shine in his eyes that made him look like he liked getting into trouble, and didn't care what people thought of him. There were obvious laugh lines around his eyes, and even as Stiles walked in, the man had a happy smile on his face. He looked like he honestly liked being where he was. 

"Hello," the man said, greeting Stiles as he got closer to the checkout. "Is there anything I could help you with?"

Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "Uh, is there a mythology section?" He asked. 

The man smiled. "Of course," he said, and walked Stiles to where he could find the mythology books. "If you need anything else, I'll be at the checkout."

The minute the man walked away, Stiles started skimming over the titles. He was looking for anything that seemed like it would include werewolf lore, but not many of the titles had that kind of information in them. Most of the titles were vague and just had the type of mythology. Things like Greek or Roman or Celtic were written across the spine of most of the books, but what Stiles was really hoping for was a book called _Mates and Werewolves: What You Need To Know About How They Are Connected_. Once he had looked at all of the titles, he started grabbing random books and looking through the chapter indexes. Even looking through those, Stiles knew he was going to be there awhile. 

After an hour, Stiles hadn't found much. There had been about four people who had come in, and each of them had given him and his stacks of books weird looks when they passed. It was like they had never seen a teenage boy sat on the floor of a bookstore, surrounded by stacks of books before. Near the end of the hour though, the older man from the checkout came back to check on Stiles. When Stiles had heard his footsteps, and looked up to see who it was, he had been worried that the man was going to have a problem with how he had all the books scattered. Stiles had put them into stacks so that they were in order of how they had been on the shelf, but that wasn't obvious to everyone. Stiles had been worried that the man was going to shout at him about getting the books out of order, instead he just chuckled at what he saw. 

"Having problems finding what you need?" He asked. 

Stiles nodded. "I don't think people write whole books about what I'm looking for, and it doesn't look like a popular subject inside other books either."

"What are you looking for?"

Stiles blushed, not wanting to say what exactly he was looking for because it was a sort of embarrassing subject. He knew that this might not even be the subject that he should be looking for, but since Brian had said he had wanted to mate Stiles, Stiles figured it was a good place to start. When he had come into the bookstore though, he hadn't thought that it was going to take so much effort to find and he definitely hadn't thought that he would have to tell an older man what he was looking for. 

"Mythology happens to be my expertise," the man said, seeming to take Stiles’s pause as him saying that he didn't think the man would be much help. "Even if one of these books doesn't have the information, I might be able to tell you what you're looking for. Or if I don't know, I might be able to tell you which of these books are most likely to include what you're looking for."

"Okay, well I'm looking for information about werewolves.”

The man nodded, looking like that was definitely going to be an easy subject to help with. "What specifically about werewolves?" 

Stiles stared at the floor, not wanting to see the weird look that he would surely get when he said what he was looking for. "Um, werewolf mates and mating."

"Any specific reason?"

Stiles shrugged. "Curious mind?"

The man shrugged. "Well you pretty much have me stumped. I didn't really look into the mating part about werewolf mythology other than the basics saying that they mate for life and for most there's just one person in the world that's meant for them. It's a lot like how humans think of soul mates."

Stiles nodded but the guy had turned around and had started taking other books off of the shelves. Within minutes he had four good sized books in his arms and he was handing them off to Stiles. 

"Would you like to buy them or spend some time skimming through them?"

Stiles looked down at the books in his arms. "I think I'll buy them."

The guy took them back. "I'll ring these up for you, while you put all those other books back." The guy was grinning as he turned around and walked away. 

Stiles put away the books.

…

Stiles hadn't been paying much attention to his surroundings the second time he went to dinner at the diner. He had grabbed a few of the mythology books he had bought during his visit to the bookstore, and had pulled them out the minute he had sat down at the same table from the day before. From the minute he had gotten there to the minute the waitress had brought his meal out, he had only put the book he was reading down once, and that had been to order. The book had a lot of information, and most of it he was sure had nothing to do with his situation, but he made notes of things that stuck out to him anyway. 

With his face in the book, he didn't notice that there was a girl, who was about his age, watching him. He didn't notice that from the minute he had sat down and pulled the books out, her gray eyed gaze hadn't left him for more than twenty seconds. He didn't notice that the girl was also sitting at a table alone. So of course he didn't notice when she got up from where she was seated, long red hair trailing after her, leaving a half full plate of food, and started walking towards him. 

"Hello," she said cheerfully, with a bright smile on her face. 

Stiles looked at her, peering up from his book. "Hello," he replied, sounding a bit more guarded than she did. 

"I'm Ally."

"Uh, hello Ally, I'm Stiles."

Ally raised an eyebrow at Stiles. "Your parents really named you that?"

"Well no," Stiles said, being all too used to having this exact conversation with people, "My parents didn't name me Stiles, they named me some Polish monstrosity that no one can pronounce."

"So you prefer Stiles."

Stiles nodded slowly. "Yes, I prefer Stiles."

"What are you reading Stiles?" Ally asked, looking down at his book quickly before looking back up at him. 

"A book on werewolf lore."

The moment the word 'werewolf' was out of Stiles’s mouth, the girl seemed to tense. The soft gray of her eyes began to harden and look like threatening storm clouds, she sat up straighter, and her mouth formed an unpleasant line. And then, just as quickly as it started, all those things melted away, back to the soft features she had had before. "Why would you be interested in werewolf lore?"

Stiles skipped over her question. "It looks like you've got personal experience."

"No," Ally said, her face taking on a look that said she thought Stiles was crazy. One deep look into her eyes though, said that he was right. "Werewolves don't exist."

"My best friend was bitten a while back, I've been threatened by one that wanted to take me to an alpha, and another alpha tried to attack me only a few days ago."

"How are you friends with him?"

"He's still my best friend, he just has a little bit of extra baggage."

"I've had a few bad experiences with them myself. I lost my family because of a pack of them."

"I'm really sorry Ally.”

The girl shook her head. "It's not like you can do anything."

The two of them sat for a minute, the silence between them seeming to swallow all of the sounds in the entire diner. It wasn't quite awkward, but it wasn't exactly friendly either. The smile that had been so prominent when Ally had first come to sit with Stiles was now gone and the hard look to her eyes had returned. Stiles had silently decided that he would wait for her to break this silence, no matter how much he wanted to run his mouth with every thought that passed through his brain, because it seemed to be such a touchy subject for her. If she wanted to pretend this part of the conversation hadn't  happened, then Stiles was perfectly fine with that, and if she wanted to talk more about werewolves, he was perfectly fine with that too. 

Ally sighed suddenly and looked straight at Stiles. "Why are you reading werewolf lore?"

"I keep getting confronted by them and told there's something interesting about scent. The last alpha actually told me it made him want to mate me. That was a new one."

Ally laughed, a sudden burst of mirth shooting from her mouth. She was quick to cover it up since multiple people in the diner looked over at her and gave her weird looks. "I'm sorry Stiles," she said a little sheepishly, "That's kind of funny."

Stiles smiled. "It's okay, looking back on it, it was pretty funny how he said it."

"So you're trying to find out what makes your scent special?" Ally asked, picking up one of the other books. 

"Uh yeah," Stiles replied, unsure of what Ally was doing. 

The girl opened the book and flipped to the first place. "I'm happy to help then."

After a about an hour at the diner, both of them had decided it wasn't exactly the ideal place to hold a research session, so naturally Stiles invited her back to his hotel room. The minute she walked in she nodded appreciatively at the line of mountain ash around the room. 

"You're really experienced in this whole keeping the big baddies out huh?"

Stiles shrugged. "It helps when you have connections."

The two had continued their session for a few more hours, until neither of them wanted to look at another book for the rest of their lives. They began to talk then and Stiles told Ally about his situation and how he was now alone since he didn't want the alphas to be able to trace him back to his family and friends. If it looked like he had left on his own terms and no one had any idea about where he was, then everyone who knew him was safer. Ally agreed, saying that he had made a good decision. Stiles started asking about her and learned that she was going to meet some of her extended family for the first time because they were now the only family she had left. She talked about how her aunt and uncle who were going to take her in knew about werewolves and wanted to help her in any way. Until meeting Stiles she had been dead set on going on a werewolf killing spree, reminding Stiles too much of Allison, but now she just wanted to keep werewolves from hurting her or her family. She wanted to train, but only to protect herself and the ones she loved. 

At about eleven o'clock that night, she decided she had to leave, or else she would never make it to her aunts and uncles by the time they were expecting her. 

"Just know, that of you ever need my help, you can definitely call me," Ally told Stiles, patting his phone that already contained her information. 

Stiles pulled the girl into a hug. "And the same goes to you," he whispered into her long red hair. 

After pulling away from the hug, she nodded and turned out the door. 


	4. Chapter 4

Ever since second grade, Scott and Stiles had been best friends. Stiles had lived in Beacon Hills with his parents his entire life, but Scott had only moved there when his parents had split up. The first day that Scott joined Stiles’s class at school, he had been the shy new kid that had to be introduced in front of the class. Most of the kids had said hi and then went right to ignoring him, but not Stiles. The minute that recess started, Stiles had walked right up to Scott and introduced himself.

“Hi, I’m Stiles, and we’re going to be best friends.”

Scott had looked at Stiles for a minute and then broke out into a grin, nodding as Stiles walked him around the playground and told him about everything. What was fun on the playground, who to stay away from, and who was safe to talk to. After that, the two boys had become inseparable. They stayed at each other’s houses all of the time, and when Stiles’s mother died, Scott was there for him. The two didn’t want to do anything that they couldn’t do together.

Of course it got a little more difficult when high school came around and the most important thing to everyone was how popular you were. Scott and Stiles had never really registered on anyone’s radar, and that had become a problem. The two thought that joining the lacrosse team might help their popularity, but they both sucked so it didn’t. The only thing that helped them was when Scott went from an asthmatic high school boy to a beta werewolf. But then that also brought along more trouble for them.

Among fighting the assortment of creatures of the night that seemed to become interested in Beacon Hills shortly after Scott became a werewolf, the two also had to deal with regular teenage problems. They had the normal fights and they gained more friends and they went through a period when it seemed like they weren’t going to be best friends for much longer, otherwise known as when Allison moved to Beacon Hills.

Now that Stiles was on his own and so far from his best friend, he felt like he had actually lost Scott. He couldn’t call or text the boy about what was happening with him, and had no idea what was going on in Beacon Hills. It ended up getting so bad that Stiles had started to miss Scott going on and on about how amazing Allison was.

Maybe all that, added with the stress of the entire situation, was why Stiles ended up finding another best friend.

...

It had been a complete accident. He had decided to start going to the diner for breakfast instead of dinner because he preferred the selection of dinner foods that he could get at the store to the selection of breakfast foods he could get. It hadn’t occurred to him that there was going to be a completely different group of waitresses than the ones he had already been acquainted with, so he wasn’t prepared when he suddenly had to meet a bunch of new people. 

Most of the waitresses had acted the same way the others had when he had walked in at nine thirty one morning. He still got to sit at the same table, which he liked a lot since he had picked his table for a reason, and none of the waitresses acted like he was anything special. They gave him a menu, took his order, and then brought his food out when it was done.

There was one waitress though that seemed to be a bit more interested in him than the rest. She was a short, small woman, but she didn’t seem to have a problem with carrying many dishes at once. Her dark brown, nearly black, hair was pulled up into a ponytail, and Stiles assumed by the look of it that her hair was curly. The entire tail waved and the very bottom of it curled up. Over the span of him eating his meal, he had caught her eye multiple times. The first few times he had thought that it was just because she had been looking in his direction when he had looked up, but after it had happened about three times, he began to think that maybe it was more than just a coincidence.

He was proved right just as he was finishing his meal and the girl sat down in the seat across from him. She had one eyebrow raised at him, and her brown eyes were looking at him with curiosity.

“The other waitresses have told us about you,” she said suddenly.

“Good things?” Stiles asked.

“I wouldn’t have told you if they were bad things. Did you just move here?”

“No, I’m just passing through.”

“Why?”

Stiles paused, trying to think of a good excuse to give this girl. He couldn’t exactly tell her the truth; since there was almost no way that she would believe him. And he also figured she would probably throw him out of the diner thinking that he was insane.

“I’m going on vacation.”

The girl looked at him like she didn’t believe his excuse, like she was going to demand him to give her the real reason, but she didn’t ask for anything else. She just continued on with the conversation. “Are you staying in a hotel around here then?”

Stiles nodded.

“Are you going to come back here?”

Stiles nodded again.

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

With that the girl walked away, going back to walking around the diner, asking people if they wanted more coffee, and doing her job.

Stiles was a little confused about what had just happened, but he decided to ignore his confusion, pay for his meal, and go back to his hotel room. There wasn’t much information he had found in those books that he had bought, but he wasn’t about to give up yet.

…

The next morning, he found himself again walking into the diner at about nine thirty. The same waitresses were working that morning that had been working the morning before, so Stiles scanned the room until he found the one that had come up and talked to him. When he had returned to his hotel room, he had realized that she hadn’t told him her name. A lot of places have their waitresses wear nametags, but that wasn’t the case with this small diner, and it was making Stiles slightly frustrated. He was more curious than what was good for him, and not knowing her name had been at the back of his brain, keeping him away from doing anything for very long.

When he found the girl, their eyes met, and to anyone else they might have thought of it as a cliché. The whole meeting the love of your life’s eyes across a crowded room was something that everyone wished for, but this girl wasn’t the love of Stiles’s life. He played for the other team.

As he sat down at his usual table, he noticed that the girl had turned to one of the other waitresses and had given them the apron she was wearing. Stiles thought he might have heard her say something about going on her break.

“You never told me your name,” the girl said, once again sitting in the seat across from the one Stiles was sitting in.

“And you never told me yours.”

The girl smirked. “I’m Carla, and you are?”

“Stiles, and before you ask that is not my actual first name but my real first name is something that no one can pronounce except for people in my family, and even some of them can’t pronounce it.” The look in the girl’s eyes told Stiles what she was about to ask, so he cut her off before she could. “And no I’m not going to tell you what it is.”

She slumped back in the seat a bit, crossing her thin arms across her chest and taking up a slightly annoyed expression. “Okay Stiles,” she said, adding more emphasis to his name than what was really necessary, “You said you were going on vacation yesterday, but I don’t believe you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’ve come here for breakfast twice, and the other waitresses say you had come in for dinner at least three times. You’ve been here for about a week, so there’s no way that you’re going on vacation but stopping in this town for a week. What are you really doing?”

“Taking a break.”

“From?”

“Life?”

Carla sighed, sounding a bit defeated. “Okay Stiles, whatever you want to go for.”

The two of them fell into an almost uncomfortable silence after that. It only lasted a few minutes, but of course a few minutes of awkward silence felt like a lifetime to Stiles, so he immediately started thinking of things he could tell the girl to make up for what he couldn’t. It had occurred to him within the first few seconds of their silence that this girl could be the person that he could actually talk to during his trip, and he had every intention of using that.

“I don’t live anywhere near here,” he started, “I’m from Beacon Hills where my father is the Sheriff. All of my friends are back in Beacon Hills, and I haven’t been able to talk to them since I left and please don’t ask why. My mother died in Beacon Hills when I was younger, and since then it’s been just my dad and I. I met my best friend in second grade, when he moved to Beacon Hills with his mom after his parents split up. I used to have a major crush on the smartest girl in my class, but certain things have made me lose that. Mainly the fact that she became one of my friends and, after her and her on-again off-again boyfriend had a major reconciliation which led to them admitting their love for each other,  I realized that she would never see me in that way.”

Carla smirked at him. “I was just going to ask you what your favorite color is,” she said, laughing.

“I don’t handle silence very well.”

“Well I guess it’s my turn then huh? Okay well I just started college and began working here so I can help my parents pay for my classes. I want to be a marine biologist, and am working on my general classes right now. After I get all of those done at the community college I’m attending now, I’m going to transfer to a bigger college. I’m not sure which one yet. My best friend moved right after high school because she got an amazing scholarship to go to a school in New York. I have a long distance relationship with my boyfriend who lives in Texas. He moved there two years ago with his family because his parents needed to be with his father’s parents, who are getting older. I have two older sisters who both live close to here, and I visited Beacon Hills once because my aunt and uncle live there.”

The two sat there, soaking in the information. Stiles was happy that he seemed to have just found a new friend. One that didn’t know about all the supernatural stuff, which might be a little bit of an annoyance sooner rather than later, but he was determined to be happy about being able to talk to someone. He could worry about the supernatural stuff later. Probably when it came time for him to leave the small town and go somewhere else.

…

From the first time Stiles and Carla had a conversation, they became immediate friends. Stiles went into the diner every morning for breakfast, and talked to Carla during her morning break, and they did all kinds of things together. Carla made Stiles go to the movies with her, walk around the mall with her, and even go grocery shopping with her. The more they hung out, the more they learned about each other. Stiles learned that Carla had wanted to be a ballerina when she was little, her favorite television show was True Blood, she hated to read, and she had always wanted a pony. In exchange for that information, Stiles told Carla anything he could. He skirted around any supernatural information but told her things like how he had wanted to be a cop like his dad when he was little, and was still considering it (he didn't tell her that he would take his knowledge of things that go bump in the night and help cities solve cases that had previously gone cold), that he liked to sing songs from Disney movies in the shower, and he enjoyed watching reality television shows. Carla kept trying to stealthily ask Stiles why he had left home, but he kept avoiding it. Every time he did, he felt so bad about having to lie, so he told her some other random fact about himself. 

Carla's favorite activity to make Stiles do with her was people watch at the mall. After the first time they did it, she decided it had to become a weekly thing, and that they would do it every Saturday. That was the one day a week that Carla didn't have to do anything college related, so it was the only perfect day to do it. The two of them would go to the food court, sit down at a table with some soft pretzels, and just watch the people that went by, or the people that went into the surrounding stores, or the people that were sitting at the other tables around them. They would sit there for hours, making up stories about why each person was doing what they were doing, or someone's life story. It was quite fun, especially since the targets never ran out. 

Taking a sip of the pop she had just bought, Carla looked at Stiles, scrunching her face up just a bit like she had thought of something that hadn’t occurred to her before that moment. “If you’re just passing through, then where are you living?” she asked Stiles.

Stiles turned around, taking his focus off of a middle aged man that had two young girls practically hanging off of his arms. He had been working on coming up with a story for the three of them, but Carla ruined his train of thought. “Uh, at a hotel.”

“Isn’t that expensive?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay.”

“If you’re just out of high school, how are you getting money?”

“My dad puts money into my bank account.”

Carla looked like she was analyzing what Stiles had just told her, trying to decide if he was telling her the truth or not. “Did you tell them how long you would be staying?”

“No, I told them I would need a room for a while. Obviously they were fine with that as long as I could pay for the room when I went to leave.” Stiles paused, trying to think of a way to turn the conversation back to something light. He knew that he needed to stay away from Beacon Hills for a while but he wasn’t happy about it, and didn’t really want to talk about how he had to stay in hotels all the time and couldn’t just go home. He grinned after a minute or so. “Are you going to miss me when I inevitably have to leave town?”

Carla rolled her eyes and pushed at Stiles shoulder. “Obviously not, I hate you too much.”

Stiles just laughed and turned back around like he had been a minute before. “Okay, what do you think about that man over there?”

“Which man?”

“The one that looks like he’s in his twenties and he’s carrying a bunch of bags.”

Carla found the man Stiles was talking about. The guy was sitting at one of the other tables in the food court, with shopping bags surrounding him on the floor, and even a few in his lap. He kept looking around, like he was waiting for someone. “He’s definitely here shopping with someone. Probably a girlfriend or a wife, but it might even be a really good friend who happens to be a girl. Somehow he got sucked into coming here. If it’s a wife or girlfriend they totally told him they would have sex when they got home if he came and carried her bags.”

“And if it’s a good friend?”

“He probably has a crush, and probably has for a long time, but the girl only sees him as a friend. The girl probably has a boyfriend, who’s probably on a sports team, and thinks he’s too good to go shopping with her when she has a perfectly good guy friend who will go with her. The boyfriend probably knows about the crush, or suspects it, but doesn’t feel threatened because his girlfriend and that guy have been friends for a long time.”

“Or maybe the friend is taken too?”

“Then he would be going shopping with his girlfriend, not with his friend.”

“What if the girl and the girlfriend are friends?”

“Then it’s plausible.”

After finishing the details of the guy’s story, the two found another person and started again. For the next two hours, Stiles and Carla did the same thing, occasionally stopping to get more food or something more to drink.

When the amount of people started to thin out, Stiles and Carla decided it was time for them to leave too. They took their trash and threw it away, and then headed out to the parking lot to find Stiles’s jeep. Carla took Stiles’s arm and wrapped it around her shoulders and wrapped her own arm around Stiles’s waist. Stiles thought it was a weird thing to do, but went with it.

When they got into the jeep, neither of them said anything until they were on the road that Carla lived on. Carla moved in her seat so she was again sitting straight up, once they had gotten in the car she had stretched out so she was lying down in the seat, and looked at Stiles. He figured she was just going to say something about making plans, which made what she did say all the more shocking.

"I want you to move in with me."


	5. Chapter 5

From the moment that Carla suggested Stiles moving in with her, he knew he had to say no. It wasn’t like he could move in with her and circle her house in mountain ash without her asking questions. Any questions pertaining to mountain ash, and any other supernatural thing, had to be avoided and they would be impossible to avoid if Stiles was living with Carla. So he knew immediately what he had to tell her, but he had no idea _how_ to tell her.

So instead of answering, Stiles hadn’t told her anything. When they pulled up to Carla’s house, she leaned over the middle console, said “Just think about it” and left. He knew he would think about it, knew that he would think about it a lot, but he tried not to start obsessing about it until he got back to his hotel room.

“There’s no way I can tell her yes,” Stiles muttered, pacing his room. “I have to think of a way to gently tell her that I can’t live with her. I get why she’s offering, I knew telling her that I was staying in a hotel was a bad idea, but I couldn’t lie about that. There was no other option, there’s no other place that I could stay in a town that I’ve never been to before. She’s just being nice, trying to make it so I don’t have to keep paying to stay in a hotel. She’s just trying to be a good friend, but I can’t let her. I can’t explain why I have a jar of black powder, and I can’t explain why I need to circle the house with it. The mythology books could probably be explained, she might just think that I really like mythology, but the mountain ash is impossible. If the whole Brian thing hadn’t happened, I would be able to move in with her.” By the end of his panicked ranting, Stiles had his hands fisted in his hair, gently tugging every time he turned around.

Stiles wanted to move in with Carla. He didn’t want to have to pay the hotel anymore, he wanted to have company. He didn’t want to have to stay by himself, and only see other people when he went to the diner or the grocery store. He liked Carla, and didn’t think there was any supernaturally charged reason that she would want him to move in. He was pretty sure that Carla didn’t want to kill him in his sleep, so it wasn’t that he would be in danger. If only he could let her know about werewolves and everything else.

 _No,_ he thought, _I can’t tell her that. I can’t tell anyone else because there is always the possibility that knowing about these things will put her in danger._

Needless to say, Carla asking him to move in with her was one of the most stress inducing things that anyone had ever asked him.

…

The next day, Stiles went to the diner a little later than normal because he and Carla had decided to go out to lunch. When he woke up, he was still stressing over what Carla had asked, but he wouldn’t have the opportunity to stress about it in his room all day. After making a sandwich, he sat and watched television until he needed to leave.

The people around the diner weren’t the people that were usually there when Stiles got there for breakfast. He wasn’t expecting them to be the same people, since he was at the diner almost two hours later than normal, but seeing the different people made walking into the familiar diner feel like he was walking in for the first time.

Instead of sitting down, Stiles stood at the cash register and waited for Carla. He looked around, examining the strangers that were sitting around, and taking in the familiar atmosphere. At his table, or the table that he always sat at, sat a man that looked to be a few years older than Stiles himself. He was sitting by himself, with a half full plate sitting on the table in front of him. The man had dark hair, perfectly tanned skin, and looked like he took his exercise very seriously. Stiles couldn’t see his eyes, since the man was looking down at the book he was holding in one hand, but Stiles wished he could. He wished that the man would look up at him, and he would be able to see the man’s eyes. Needless to say, the minute Stiles saw the guy he felt a sort of attraction. But he wasn’t going to tell anyone that.

A few minutes of staring at the man later, Carla walked up to Stiles and pushed his arm. “Come on Stiles, let’s get out of here.”

With one more look back at the guy, Stiles led the way out to his car.

…

“Who were you looking at?” Carla asked as soon as she got out of the jeep and closed the door.

“No one in particular,” Stiles said, shrugging and letting Carla lead the way into the local McDonalds. “I was just scanning the room.”

Carla rolled her eyes. “You’re lying Stiles, I saw you looking right at that guy that was sitting at the table you usually sit at.”

Stiles rubbed the back of his neck. “No I wasn’t.”

“You definitely were.”

The conversation paused for a few moments as the two of them ordered their food and found a table to sit at. Stiles knew that instead of talking about random things or picking people to make stories about, the two of them were going to sit at the small table and Carla was going to pester Stiles about why he had been looking at the guy. He didn’t want to tell her that he thought he was attractive, didn’t want to tell her that he wanted to know more about the guy, but knew that eventually Carla would get the information that she wanted. Stiles didn’t know how that was going to go though. The two of them had never talked about Carla’s stance on homosexuality, and he really didn’t feel like coming out to someone that was homophobic. He thought he would rather run over hot coals barefoot and then pour acid over his face.

The minute Carla had unwrapped her burger, she gave Stiles a look that blatantly told him that he better start talking. So he did, but not about what she wanted to know.

“This is a nice McDonalds. It seems like they’re trying to redo all of them so that they all look the same.”

Carla glared at him, so he started talking faster.

“Why did you want to come here for lunch anyway? We could’ve gone back to your house and I could’ve made something for us or we could have gone somewhere else. We really didn’t need to come to a fast food restaurant. I may not be rolling in cash right now, but I know better than to go out and buy all kinds of stuff. I’m pretty conscious about money you know. Since I’d be spending my dad’s money I wouldn’t have splurged on anything after going to eat. Really we wouldn’t have even needed to go somewhere fancy, but don’t you eat a lot of this fast food stuff all the time anyway? Don’t you want a change?”

Carla put her hand right over Stiles’s mouth. “Okay Stiles, you can stop babbling now. If you don’t want to talk about the guy, then we won’t talk about the guy.”

When Carla took her hand away, Stiles looked at her. The way she had immediately started picking at the fries on her tray and the way she was inspecting the burger in her hand told Stiles that she really was willing to give up on the topic. That worried Stiles. Even though he had only known the girl for a few days, he knew well enough that she did not just drop subjects. She might drop them for the moment, but they would be brought back up. Stiles had seen her get annoyed with a coworker, and then bring it up days later in order to get them to do something. Stiles had also been asked multiple questions by her, and when he would try to get out of talking about them she would either wait until later in the day or she would bring them back up the next day. He knew very well that Carla wasn’t just going to drop this issue; she would wait until Stiles thought she had forgotten about it, and bring it up again. But Stiles wasn’t going to fall for it, he was ready for whenever she decided to bring it back up.

Which he didn’t end up having to wait very long.

“You do know that I know that you like guys right?” she asked, looking up at Stiles and focusing on his face.

“Um no, I did not know that.”

Carla put a fry in her mouth. “Well I do. You don’t exactly hide it when we sit around at the mall. Any time I say there’s some hot guy, you whip your head in the direction that I’m looking and immediately either agree or disagree. And whenever you disagree, it isn’t because you are trying to show that you’re manly and don’t think any guys can be attractive, it’s because you honestly don’t think they are attractive. So if you don’t want to talk about that guy that you were staring at because you’re afraid that I’m going to judge you for liking men, then you’re wrong so we can talk about him if you want.”

“That was totally the only reason that I didn’t want to talk about him,” Stiles said, sarcasm dripping off of the words. Then he gave Carla a smile. “But that was one of them.”

Carla smiled back. “Do you want me to tell you about him or not?”

As it turned out, Carla didn’t know much about the mystery man. She knew his name, Derek Hale, and that he didn’t really like talking. Apparently every time he came into the diner, every day right before the lunch crowd showed up, and every time the waitresses would try to start a conversation with him he would end it abruptly. Most of the waitresses thought he was extremely rude, even though he was extremely hot so they all still gushed over him. Carla said that he came into the diner every day, sat at the same table, which happened to be the same table that Stiles sat at, ordered the same meal, and he always had a book to read. She said that every single waitress at the diner had tried to get his attention; some of them would sit in front of him and practically lay across the table, and others had taken to wearing shirts that they definitely shouldn’t be wearing. When Carla had told Stiles this she had immediately started smirking, making it seem like she knew something that she was just dying to tell Stiles.

“Why are you smirking at me like that?” Stiles asked her.

“Don’t you get it Stiles, he’s not interested in any of the female workers, or any of their female parts.”

Stiles had to use all of his willpower to keep his happiness to himself. “Okay, that’s awesome.”

Carla punched his arm, coming very close to knocking over both the pops they had bought. “I hate you.”

After the two had finished lunch, Stiles took Carla back to the diner and then went back to his hotel room. He had only just walked in when he received a text: _Don’t think you’re getting out of talking to me about you moving in with me_. He couldn’t help the smirk that appeared on his lips.

…

Stiles would be lying if he tried to tell anyone that he hadn’t thought about Derek Hale a lot after Carla told him about the man. The man’s last name sounded familiar, but Stiles couldn’t place where he would have heard the name before. He didn’t think it was a very common last name, and it wasn’t like he had left Beacon Hills enough to have met people who weren’t from his home town. His first thought had been that maybe there was someone famous with the last name, but he quickly dismissed it.

So after obsessing over all the details that Carla had told him, and the familiarity of the guy’s name, Stiles decided he would have to do what he did best: research. He grabbed his laptop and sat down on the bed. Stiles’s back was to the headboard, and he had his legs stretched out flat. The laptop was sitting on his thighs.

Part of Stiles thought this was a little creepy. Typing the guy’s name into Google, Stiles felt extremely weird. He knew there was no way Derek would ever find out about this, but it just gave Stiles the sense that he was doing something very wrong. He didn’t really know how he would feel if someone Googled him. Would he feel gracious that someone had found him interesting enough to look up, or would he be creeped out? Somehow doing this with famous people felt fine, but doing it with people who were just normal citizens felt wrong. Stiles did it anyway.

The first few things that came up were links to Facebook pages. After Stiles had checked those, he found out that not one of them belonged to the guy at the diner. The next few things to come up were sports pages on the website for Beacon Hills High. When Stiles had seen the address, and looked to make sure it was the same guy, he let out a gasp. What were the odds that two people from the same small town would end up at the same small diner in another small town?

Finally Stiles came to the end of the first page of Google results. After finding the sports pages, and finding out that Derek had been on the basketball and lacrosse teams, and had been the captain of the lacrosse team during his junior year before quitting both sports, Stiles had decided that he wasn’t going to go to the next page of results. The first one was always the most reliable, and Stiles was starting to feel like he was really invading the guy’s privacy, especially when he read the name of the last result on the page.

The last result really bothered Stiles though. The name had been ‘Suspected Arson Leads to Death of Hale Family’. According to the article, almost the entire Hale family had died when their house was set on fire. Derek and his sister Laura, who had both been at school when the fire happened, had survived along with their uncle Peter. For many years after the fire though, Uncle Peter had been in a coma, and neither Derek nor Laura were living in Beacon Hills. At about the same time that the animal attacks first started in Beacon Hills, Uncle Peter had woken up from his coma. Derek’s older sister had been the first to die from those animal attacks, and shortly after, Peter Hale died too.

Derek Hale was the last surviving member of his family.

…

When Stiles went to the diner the next day, he was still thinking about what he had found out about Derek. He wasn’t just some random person anymore, he was a person that Stiles had heard about a lot while growing up.

Stiles showed up at the diner a little later than normal, hoping to see Derek there eventually. He should have known that Carla would have put his timing and their conversation about the mysterious stranger together. When he walked in, he went right to his table, which was still vacant since Derek wasn’t there yet, and sat down like nothing was different.

“Well, well, well I thought you weren’t even going to come in today Stiles,” Carla said smirking and taking her seat across from her friend.

Stiles held the menu up to his face and pretended to read it. He had no intention of ordering anything different than what he normally ordered but he didn’t want to look at Carla yet. “I got up a little late this morning.”

“Really?” Carla asked, and Stiles could tell that she didn’t believe a word that he just said. “What kept you up last night then?”

“Researching.”

“What were you researching?”

“Nothing in particular. I was just reading through some Wikipedia articles.”

Carla made an affirming noise. “Okay, whatever you say.”

When one of Carla’s co-workers came over to the table, Stiles told them that he would have his usual, which pretty much all of the workers knew by now, and then they took the menu away from him. Stiles tried not to look at Carla by playing with the silverware that was on the table and then restacking the different kinds of jams and jellies in the little container that was also on the table. When he finished that, he realized he had nothing else to distract him.

“Stiles,” Carla said, reaching over and making him turn his head toward the door.

Through the door came Derek, a book tucked under his arm, and a bored look glancing around the room. Almost immediately Derek noticed that someone was sitting at his table. He looked a little disgruntled like he didn’t want to try to pick a different table, but eventually walked toward one that was only a few feet from Stiles. Stiles noticed that Derek had green eyes, something that he hadn’t even thought to look at when he had seen all of the pictures of the man as a teenager.

“Well I guess we can’t talk about him now can we?” Carla asked, a bit of laughter bubbling out of her after the words.

Stiles glared.

“Is this going to become normal?” Carla asked.

Stiles shrugged.

“Okay then, thanks for the information Stiles. Glad I could count on you.”

The two sat for a moment in silence, Carla searching Stiles’s face, and Stiles trying to discreetly look at Derek. He didn’t look familiar like Stiles had expected him to. Not that it should have been surprising when Derek hadn’t looked familiar the first time Stiles had seen him.

“You know something about him don’t you?” Carla asked, poking Stiles in the arm to get his attention.

Stiles shrugged, not wanting to let Carla know that he had searched the guy on Google.

“Whatever. Are you going to move in with me?”

Every other time that Carla had asked, Stiles had been able to brush the question off. The first time had been when he was dropping her off, and the girl had given him the option to think about it. And the second time had been through text, so again Stiles hadn’t had to reply. This time though, Stiles was looking right at Carla when she asked. The look she gave Stiles was a kind that he was all too familiar with because Scott constantly looked at him the same way whenever he wanted Stiles to do something. Those big, brown, innocent eyes were looking at him in an almost pathetic way that made Stiles think that Carla would start whimpering like a small puppy if he said no. Back at Beacon Hills, he had always told himself that he was good at telling Scott no, even though it was obvious to everyone that he wasn’t, and it was really no different when Carla looked at him in the same way.

Stiles let out a sigh, feeling himself give up even as his mind started going a million miles an hour to try and figure out what he was going to do once he gave Carla her answer. 

“Alright, I’ll move in with you.”


	6. Chapter 6

After Stiles told Carla that he would move in with her, it shouldn’t have been surprising that she wanted him to get out of the hotel immediately. She barely let him finish eating before she was rushing him back out of the diner, insisting that he check out and pay for his room, and then get all of his stuff and take it to her house.

So that was what he did. He drove back to the hotel after paying for his meal and grabbed all of his stuff. There really wasn’t much so grabbing that wasn’t going to take very long. What was going to take a while was cleaning up the mountain ash that he had spread around the room. That in of itself took about forty five minutes because he had to make sure to get every single little grain of it off the floor, and the small, portable vacuum that he had bought didn’t really hold much. Once that was done though, he went down to the desk and paid for his room.

The man at the desk looked extremely surprised when he swiped Stiles’s debit card and it didn’t get rejected. Stiles walked out of the hotel with a smirk on his face.

When he got to Carla’s house, his friend wasn’t there since she was still at work. Stiles knew where the extra room was, but didn’t put his stuff in there. The logical part of his brain said that that was where Carla was definitely going to have him put his stuff, but he felt like he was intruding just at the thought of putting his stuff there. So instead he sat his bag and everything else down by the kitchen table and sat down on Carla’s couch. He watched television until the girl got home.

“Why didn’t you put this stuff in the extra bedroom?” Carla asked the minute she walked into the small house.

Stiles blushed, his pale cheeks quickly turning a bright red. “Uh, I don’t know, I felt weird, like I was imposing.”

Carla rolled her eyes. “You live here now, you aren’t imposing.”

Stiles opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but Carla cut him off. “I don’t care that you don’t know how long you will be staying here, you still live here for however long that you need to.”

“How much do I need to pay you for rent?” Stiles asked, figuring that that would be a safe topic to switch the conversation to.

“I’ll tell you when I get the bill,” Carla said and then walked off. She walked into her bedroom and closed the door.

Stiles still wasn’t sure what to do. He knew that Carla wanted him to put his things in the extra room, his room, but he was still wary to do so. It was actually a weird feeling since he had never had a problem making his presence known everywhere else.

When Carla came back out of her room, she had changed out of the short sleeve t-shirt and jeans she had been wearing for work and into a different short sleeve t-shirt and a pair of sweat pants, Stiles knew the minute that she saw his bag still in the same place it had been when she had walked into her room. Her shoulders slumped a little and she looked right at Stiles, raising one eyebrow and putting her hand on her hip. He knew an annoyed look when he saw one, and the look Carla was giving him was definitely annoyed.

“Are you just going to be staying on the couch then?” she asked him, even her tone giving off the vibe that she wasn’t going to deal with his shit.

“Nope,” he replied and immediately took all of the belongings he had brought or obtained and took it into the room he would be staying at.

Carla rolled her eyes. “What would you like for dinner?” she asked, walking into the small kitchen.

Stiles walked over to her. “Why don’t you let me make something? I can figure something out and then we can go grocery shopping if I need anything extra.”

Carla nodded.

Stiles decided he was going to make the lasagna that his mom had always made when he was little. Making it made him think of her and his father, so it would be nice for him. Since Carla didn’t have any of the supplies that Stiles needed to make the lasagna, the two of them headed to the grocery store to get what he needed, and some extra supplies that Carla was running low on.

Just like Stiles knew she would, Carla loved the lasagna.

…

That night, after Carla had gone to bed, Stiles remembered that he needed to circle the house with mountain ash. He didn’t know how he was going to explain the stuff to Carla when she inevitably noticed it, but he told himself that he would tackle that obstacle when it appeared.

Stiles grabbed the jar of mountain ash he had hid in the back of the closet in his room. The house was small, so he wouldn’t be using a lot of the stuff, but he didn’t know how much he would need so he couldn’t just grab some and start circling the house. He knew that even if he only grabbed a handful he could make it stretch around the entire house, but he wanted to be safe.

Surrounding the house took probably ten minutes total. When Stiles was done he wiped the excess off of his hand and then stood to admire his handiwork. There was definitely no way that Carla wasn’t going to notice the stuff the minute she walked out of the house. The line of black stuck out like a sore thumb against the white of the house and the bright green of the grass.

Then Stiles got an idea. He thought back to what Deaton had said when he had given Stiles the mountain ash for the very first time. He had said that the key to using this stuff was to believe that it would work. Maybe if Stiles believed that the mountain ash would be disguised, it would.

The only thing he could do was try so he closed his eyes and pictured the black mountain ash becoming a green color that would match the grass that it lie on.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t tell there was anything surrounding the house except for the grass that was supposed to be there.

…

When Stiles woke up the next day and the first thing on his mind was that he needed to start getting ready to go to the diner, he knew he was in a rut. He had a moment where he thought that it had to be impossible since he was currently hiding from people that had nasty plans for him, but when he went over what he did every day, it was painfully obvious that he was definitely in a rut.

Every day, he woke up at about the same time, spent ten minutes convincing himself why it was a good idea to get out of bed, and then he would get in the shower. After he was clean, he would get dressed and head to the diner. Before that meant leaving as soon as he got dressed, but now that meant he would watch a half hour episode of a reality TV show, and then head out. He bought the same breakfast every day, and spent the same amount of time talking to Carla. After finishing his meal, he would go back to Carla’s house. His options there were to watch TV, read a book, or work out. He had it worked out that on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday he would work out, and Tuesday and Thursday would be spent reading or watching TV for about an hour. Since he had only been at Carla’s for a few days, he didn’t know what he would be doing on the weekend, but he figured it would be a lot like what he did when he wasn’t living with Carla. Saturday would be spent a lot like his days Monday through Friday, and Sunday would be spent grocery shopping and people watching with Carla.

Those were the things that he did, and he had no idea how to change anything. So with a huff, he got out of bed and went on with what his day plan was.

He took a shower, got dressed, watched an episode of the Big Bang Theory, and then headed out to his jeep.

When he got to the diner, his first thought was to sit at a different table since that would change a little bit of his day, but when he looked around at his options; he decided he wasn’t quite ready to part with his table yet.

None of the waitresses came over to him when he sat down. One of them came over and set a steaming cup of coffee in front of him, and then walked back to the kitchen. About ten minutes later, the same waitress came back out and placed a Farmer’s Omelet, which included potatoes, ham, and cheese, in front of him. Within minutes of that, Carla came and sat down in the seat in front of him.

 “I’m in a rut,” Stiles said as his friend sat in front of him, not even bothering to swallow the large fork full of omelet that he had just shoveled into his mouth.

Carla laughed. “No you aren’t Stiles, and what have I told you about talking with your mouthful?”

“Not to,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes. “And I am in a rut Carla.”

“What do you call a rut?”

Stiles went over the list of things he did in a day just like he had in his head that morning. By the end of his list, Carla was laughing again.

“You don’t need to worry Stiles, I think I have a way for you to get out of your so called rut.”

Stiles decided to obey her no talking with your mouth full rule just this once, and instead of asking what she meant, just waited for her to tell him.

“Mr. Mysterious of course.”

“Mr. Mysterious?”

“Derek. You like him right?”

Stiles shrugged, causing Carla to roll her eyes.

“I know you do, and since I am the amazing friend that I am, I am going to set the two of you up.”

Just as Carla finished her sentence, Derek himself walked into the diner. He looked around, as if he was checking to see if his table was open, and when he saw that it wasn’t, he walked over to the table next to it. Carla did a small dance in her seat, receiving a few weird looks, but ignoring them. She also ignored Stiles, who was trying valiantly to discourage her from her mission even though he was getting omelet all over the table in front of him.

He knew he was about to be embarrassed anyway, he might as well do it to himself instead of letting his so called friend do it for her.

Carla stood up from the table and moved closer to Stiles. She quickly pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I’ll talk to you at home, yeah?”

With that, she was gone, not even waiting for Stiles to answer her.

Many of the waitresses had taken notice of Derek the moment he had walked in, of course they had, but none of them got the chance to wait on him, since before any of them could get rid of what they were currently doing, Carla was at his table.

“What can I get you today sir?” she asked, taking Derek’s attention away from the book that he was already reading.

“Coffee to drink please.”

“And to eat?”

“Uh, the Farmer’s Omelet I guess.”

Carla smiled to herself, knowing that that was Stiles’s exact order every day. “I’ll take this back to the kitchen and get it out here to you as fast as possible.”

Derek nodded, and turned back to his book.

On the way from Derek’s table back to the kitchen, Carla looked over at Stiles. Her friend was watching her with suspicion written all over his face, so Carla waved at him with a smile on her face.

He just continued his stubborn glare.

Carla took in Derek’s order, and walked right back out to the man’s table. Of course she knew that it was going to take a little work to get Derek to talk to her, and she knew that he was going to try to get her to leave him alone by doing everything that he could, but Carla wasn’t going to let that discourage her. She was very capable at just ignoring Derek’s obvious wishes and talking on.

“Hello,” she said, sitting in the seat across from the one Derek was sitting in.

In this seat, she was sitting next to Stiles, just a few feet away from the boy. She kept herself from looking over at her friend, but she knew that the boy was still glaring at her, furiously asking her not to do this with his eyes.

Derek looked up from his book, putting his hand down on the page so that the book wouldn’t close. “Hello,” he said.

“What is that that you’re reading?”

“Uh, _Harry Potter and t_ _he Order of the Phoenix_.”

“So you’re a Harry Potter fan?”

“I guess you could say that.”

Everything that came out of Derek’s mouth sounded like a plea for her to leave, but she ignored them. “My friend is also a Harry Potter fan.”

Carla heard Sties groan.

Derek nodded like he was saying how interesting, but his face definitely said that he didn’t care.

“I think that you would like my friend.”

“Do you now?”

“Yes I do. He talks a lot, which might annoy you since you don’t talk at all, but he likes Harry Potter and he orders the same thing that you ordered, and I think if the two of you got to know each other, you would hit it off.”

“Okay,” Derek said.

“Would you like to meet him?” Carla asked, putting a hopeful edge to her voice. She had been using this trick for years and it had yet to fail her. If she could get Stiles to move in with her by using this voice, then she could get Derek to talk to Stiles.

“Uh I don’t-”

“I’ll go get him!”

The look on Derek’s face as Carla stood up from her seat was priceless. He looked panicked, like he didn’t want to have to talk to anyone that he didn’t have to. Carla was worried for a second that he was a person that had extreme social anxiety and that he was going to have an anxiety attack the minute she brought Stiles over, but just had to hope that he didn’t. Maybe he just wasn’t a people person. If Carla knew anything about Stiles though, she knew he would be able to pull Derek out of his no talking to other people attitude. Even if Stiles just rambled on, it would work out just fine. Probably.

“Stiles, come on,” Carla said, pushing Stiles out of his seat, and pulling him toward Derek’s table.

Carla then pushed Stiles into the seat she had just vacated and clapped her hands together. “Okay kiddies, get to know each other, I know you will get along swimmingly. Derek, I’ll go check on your meal, and Stiles I’ll go take care of your empty plate.”

Stiles blushed, watching his friend leave. The minute she got home, she had another thing coming. “I’m Stiles,” he said, facing Derek.

“I’m Derek.”

“Uh, what are you reading?”

“The Order of the Phoenix,” Derek gritted out.

“Dude, I can leave if you want me to,” Stiles said, trying not to feel disappointed. He wanted to get to know Derek, and possibly date the guy if he was so inclined, but he wasn’t going to force himself on him. If Derek didn’t want to talk to Stiles, he would leave. There was no way he was going to talk to someone who definitely didn’t want to talk to him. If this didn’t work out, he could always go home and cry on the couch with a tub of ice cream which some romantic comedy is playing in the background.

“No, no, you’re fine,” Derek said, rubbing his hand down his face, “Your friend actually reminds me of my older sister.”

“Oh really?” Stiles said, wondering if that was why Derek looked so stressed, since his older sister had been murdered in Beacon Hills.

“Yeah, she was always bossing me around, making me do things that ‘were for your own good Derek’. It got annoying but-” Derek trailed off, not adding anything to his statement.

“I’m sorry if she was annoying you. She seems to think that we’re perfect for each other, but we’ve never talked before.”

“Yeah, I figured. She said that she thought we would get along because you like Harry Potter and I ordered the same meal that you order every day.”

Stiles nodded, laughing to himself. “I’m still sorry.”

“It’s okay. Eating breakfast by myself does get a little tiresome.”

Stiles knew that Derek only said that because he felt bad and didn’t want to hurt Stiles’s feelings. Yes it was nice of him, but it didn’t mean that Stiles was completely sure that he wasn’t going to be rejected in the next few minutes.

Instead of coming close to a rejection though, Derek asked Stiles what he liked most about Harry Potter. It was a small thing to ask, but it easily led into Stiles talking about other things. Derek didn’t talk much, especially after Carla brought out his meal, smiling smugly at Stiles, but that was okay. Stiles then went from talking about Harry Potter to the people that he had left at home. Derek didn’t say a thing about being from Beacon Hills too, not that Stiles had been expecting him to.

“My best friend, Scott, has never seen _Star Wars_. I mean how can you not see them?”

Derek huffed out a laugh. Really, the only way that Stiles knew that the other man had laughed was the fact that that had been the only thing Derek had done when he had actually thought what Stiles had said was funny. Derek wouldn’t look at Stiles though, and Stiles knew what that meant.

Stiles threw his hands up in exasperation. “You haven’t seen them either! Were you raised by wolves?”

Derek huffed again, like he thought something in that sentence had been funny.

“You are going to see them, I am going to make you. I don’t care if you would prefer to never see me again, I will find you and we will watch _Star Wars_.”

Derek shook his head. “Actually, I would love to see you again.”

Stiles didn’t let his surprise show, but his heart had suddenly started beating like it was going to be beating on the table in a few minutes, and he was trying not to jump up and down while screaming. Instead, Stiles just kept on going with the conversation. “Then when we see each other again, we will watch the movies.”

“Stiles, I’d like to go on a date with you.”

Stiles widened his eyes. “W-what?”

“A date, with you.”

“We just met.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I don’t care, give me your number, I’ll give you mine, and we can set up a date. And a real one. I’ll plan it, but it will not involve _Star Wars_. We can do that some other time.”

“Uh, okay,” Stiles said, trading phones with Derek so he could put his number into Derek’s phone.

When they gave each other their phone back, Derek smiled a bit at Stiles. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

“Uh, okay,” was the only thing that Stiles could think of to say.

As he sat at the  table, Derek went to pay, and left. Stiles was thinking the entire time about what he could do for Carla as a thank you.


	7. Chapter 7

“So what happened with you and Mr. Mysterious?” Carla asked as she walked into the house to find Stiles sitting on the couch, the television playing a DVD intro on repeat, and what looked to be all of the lights on in the house.

Stiles looked up from his phone, looking around the room like he hadn’t noticed what it looked like around him. “Hey Carla, did you just get home?”

Carla rolled her eyes and put her purse down on the small kitchen table. “Yes I did. So what happened with you and Mr. Mysterious?”

“We’re going on a date,” Stiles said, a big grin breaking out across his face.

“Really? Already?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“I don’t know. When are you guys going?”

Stiles shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Derek said he’s going to plan it and then he’s going to text me the details.”

Carla looked at Stiles. By the expression on her face, Stiles could tell that there was something that she wasn’t telling him. He didn’t want to rush to conclusions, but he had his suspicions on what his friend would keep from him.

“Why do you seem like you’re not very excited about this?” Stiles blurted out, his entire plan of slowly bringing up the topic thrown out the window.

Carla sighed. “I’m happy for you Stiles; I just don’t want to see you get your heart broken and you unable to put the pieces back together.”

“Why do you think that’s going to happen?”

“Derek just looks like the type of guy that does that. He looks like the type of guy who will do all these amazing things with you, get you attached to him, and then he’ll let you go. He’d probably use the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech and then you would never hear from him again.”

“I’m sensing past experiences.”

“That’s a story for another day Stiles.”

“Okay well I won’t get my heart broken. Derek is more likely to get his heart broken.” Stiles paused when he saw the doubting look on Carla’s face. “You are so mean you know that? Anyway, I’m not going to be able to stay here forever Carla.”

“I know,” Carla said, giving Stiles a look that was a mixture between not knowing where he was going with that point and wishing he hadn’t brought it up at all.

“So this thing between Derek and I, it might not even get very far because eventually I’m going to have to leave, and Derek won’t be coming with me. He’ll end up being left behind.”

“As long as you think so,” Carla said, wrapping an arm around Stiles’s shoulders. “I’m not going to be left behind though right?”

“Of course not.”

…

The next morning, Stiles woke up to his phone vibrating beneath his pillow. With a groan, he pulled it out and saw he had a text message from Derek.

_I’ll pick you up at 7 tonight_

Even Stiles’s sleep riddled brain knew that it needed to be excited to this. The moment that Stiles read the last word, he was bounding out of his bed and into the kitchen, set on excitedly running around the empty house. He knew that he would be seeing Derek soon; there was no way that they wouldn’t see each other at the diner just because they were going on a date that night.

So Stiles set about running off his excess energy, bounding around the house as he got ready to go to the diner for breakfast. He vaguely wondered if his and Derek's breakfast would be any different since they were going to see each other later that night. Would they sit at separate tables? Would they talk about what Derek had planned for their date? Would Derek even show up for breakfast?

Those questions all ended up being answered during his time at the diner. Derek did show up, and he was waiting for Stiles when he walked through the door. 

Derek had heard the bell above the door chime, signaling the fact that someone had walked in, and had practically whipped his head up to look toward the door. The look on his face was his normal, blank, attractive look, and he was wearing his normal dark blue jeans, black t shirt, and black leather jacket, but his demeanor changed when he saw Stiles walk into the building. He didn't quite smile, even though the corners of his mouth twitched up a little, but he seemed happy to see Stiles there. When Stiles had been back at Beacon Hills and had had to suffer through Scott and Allison's relationship, he sometimes found himself wondering what it would feel like to see someone that he really liked, and that seemed to really like him back. Maybe he was jumping the gun with his relationship with Derek, but he felt that maybe he did know what Allison and Scott felt when they saw each other. Or at least he was starting to understand. 

Derek looked at Stiles and flicked his eyes down, telling Stiles to sit down with him. There was no way Stiles could turn down that offer, so of course he made his way over to the small table, greeting waitresses and familiar people as he went along. 

"The people here seem to really like you," Derek said as Stiles took the seat across from him. 

"I guess so."

Derek smirked, which seemed like the one other, unguarded, facial expression he could make. 

"They're interested by you," Stiles replied after a minute of watching Derek smirk. 

"They're not that interested in me Stiles," Derek said, his emotional walls coming back up and being cemented into place. 

"You completely fit the 'tall, dark, and handsome' look. They're definitely interested in you."

You think I'm handsome?" Derek asked, smirk falling back into place. His eyes still looked guarded, but they had a joking look to them too, like he could at least afford this with Stiles without getting himself hurt. 

Stiles punched Derek's arm. Thankfully, before he could say anything else, Carla came up to their table, carrying a platter with their food on it. 

...

If it hadn't been for Carla, Stiles would've begun panicking at six o'clock. By five thirty, Stiles had started thinking about what would happen if something bad happened during the date. He already knew he was going to embarrass himself, he would ramble about things that Derek didn't care about an he would go off on tangents that Derek would hopefully be able to follow and he would probably trip over his own feet and he would probably spill something on himself, if not on Derek. Those things he knew were destined to happen, so he wasn't stressing about those things, instead he was thinking about the really bad things that could happen. Those omegas from Beacon Hills could have found him and decided to try to kidnap him again, another alpha could show up and try to mate him again, or another creature could show up and ruin everything. He thought about calling Scott from a pay phone or from Carla's phone, and was about to when Carla walked into his room. 

"How are you holding up?" she asked, smoothing out the wrinkles on the clothes Stiles had lain down on his bed. 

"I'm fine," he insisted. 

Carla rolled her eyes. "You've been pacing in here for the last half an hour. Derek is going to be here in an hour, are you ready?"

Stiles pointed to the clothes he was wearing. "Do I look ready?"

"That's not what I meant. Obviously you are not in your date clothes yet. I was asking if you are mentally ready. Are you stressing out?"

"Did you see who I was going out with? Of course I'm nervous."

“You have no reason to be nervous.”

“I have perfect reason to be nervous. I am going out on a date with a fucking god, how am I supposed to be calm about this?”

Carla picked up the pair of jeans Stiles had picked out. They weren’t overly dressy, but they didn’t look like something someone would wear on a normal day either. When Carla had taken Stiles out to get them, he had been properly stressing out about what kinds of clothes he should get. “I don’t know what we’re doing on this date. We could be going to a fancy restaurant and I’m going to be wearing jeans and a plaid shirt. Or we could be walking around the park and I would be wearing a plum button down and dress pants. Why didn’t Derek tell me where we were going?” he had said, rushing around the clothes racks and muttering to himself. Carla chuckled when she thought of it.

“You’re going to be fine Stiles. Derek is going to love-”

Stiles shot up off the bed like the comforter had burned him. “Woah, I am not looking for love with this guy Carla.”

Carla rolled her eyes. “Fine, he is going to like you a lot as long as you act like yourself and don’t try to pretend to be someone else just so you can impress him.”

As Stiles put his clothes on, trying to nonchalantly move on from the moment before, it occurred to him that the speech that Carla was giving him seemed like one that a parent would give to their nervous teen right before their first date. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing a friend would give another friend before an important date, but since his father wasn’t there to give it, he was glad that Carla could be. He needed to confidence boost.

“I promise I will act like myself, mom, even if that won’t impress Derek,” Stiles said, rolling his eyes.

Carla had her mouth opened and a stern look on her face like she was about to tell Stiles off, but just then a car horn sounded from outside the house and Stiles took off running, yelling his goodbye as he ran out the door.

…

If Derek was surprised by Stiles’s breathless greeting, he didn’t say anything. The minute Stiles got his seatbelt buckled, Derek drove off without saying a word.

“Well hello there,” Stiles said, breathing a bit shallower than normal in an attempt to get his breath back.

“Why were you running?” Derek asked, voice staying relatively flat, just barely sounding different for the question.

“I was picking on Carla when you honked and ran so that she couldn’t retaliate.”

Derek nodded.

“So where are we going?”

The corners of Derek’s mouth twitched. “You’ll see when we get there won’t you?”

Stiles groaned and sprawled out in his seat. “You’re sure you can’t tell me?”

“Of course I can tell you.”

Stiles pouted. “But you won’t?”

“Exactly.”

Even though Stiles wanted to sit and pester Derek about it, he decided it would probably be better if he didn’t do that. Of course he wanted to know, and he would have definitely annoyed anyone else, but since this was his first date with the guy, he figured he should play it safe and tone down the pestering.

Stiles looked at the radio. “What kind of music do you listen to?” he asked.

Derek looked over at him for a brief second, just long enough for Stiles to see that Derek was looking at him like he didn’t know where the question was going to lead.

Stiles asked the question again.

“I don’t know. I listen to a lot of stuff. Anything that comes through well I guess,” he finally said, shrugging.

“No specific bands that you like? There isn’t a specific genre of music that you absolutely hate? Or a specific band or artist? Or a song?”

“I don’t really like pop.”

“But you will listen to it if it comes through well.”

“If it’s the only thing. I listen to a lot of the older rock stuff, because that was what my parents listened to and-” Derek stopped, staring straight at the road, unblinking for a few minutes.

Stiles knew that Derek’s parents, and the rest of his family, were a touchy subject. And he knew that because he had done some snooping around, so it wasn’t like he could just tell Derek that he knew.

So Stiles sat in his seat and waited for Derek to come back to the land of the living.

“Old rock?”

Derek shook himself. “Huh? Oh, yeah. I like old rock because my parents used to listen to it.”

Against every fiber of his curious being, Stiles managed not to ask what had happened to Derek’s parents. If he had wanted to tell Stiles, he would have.

“What about you?” Derek asked, looking over at Stiles briefly.

Stiles shrugged. “I like alternative rock. But I’ll listen to anything.”

For the rest of the car ride, the two were silent. Stiles had a feeling that Derek was thinking about his parents, so he didn’t say anything. It annoyed Stiles a little that it was silent, just because it was silent not because it was uncomfortable or anything, but he couldn’t think of anything to talk about. This was a feat in itself.

About half an hour after Derek had picked Stiles up, Derek turned down a road that was littered with cars. All kinds of people had parked down either side of the road, and Stiles had no idea why. At first glance, it didn’t seem like there was any reason for the people to do so. There were no houses on either side of the road, no businesses, just empty lots. It wasn’t until Stiles looked a little more in front of them, did he realize what was going on.

The first thing that Stiles saw was the large Ferris wheel on the horizon. Then he noticed the bright lights shining against the early evening sun. Even after that, it took Stiles a moment to fully realize where they were.

“You brought me to the fair for our first date.”

Derek looked over at him, pure panic seeping through the cracks in his steely exterior. “You don’t like it?” he asked.

“No,” Stiles said, letting a grin break out across his face, “I love it.

Derek, looking pleased, got out of the car and proceeded to stand near the back, waiting for Stiles to join him. Stiles looked at Derek, studying his features. His eyes didn't look as guarded as usual, and he looked closer to a smile than ever. The muscles of his back seemed to relax, his shoulders sagging. Until now, when Stiles took time to notice how relaxed Derek looked, Stiles realized how tense Derek had looked on the drive here. Stiles wondered if Derek had been that worried that Stiles wouldn't enjoy their date. 

"I can't believe you brought me to the fair," Stiles said, bumping into Derek a little as they walked. 

"You like the idea then?" Derek said, with a nonchalant air. Stiles almost snorted, he had seen how nervous Derek had been a few minutes ago. 

"I told you," Stiles said, bumping into Derek again, "I love it."

Derek smiled at that. "So is there anything you don't like doing at the fair?" He asked. 

"What do you mean?"

"Some people don't like the rides, some don't like looking at the farm animals, some don't like the games, so there anything that you don't want to do?"

Stiles shook his head. "Nope, I want to do it all."

So that's what they did. Derek knew their timetable, knew how long they should stay at the fair before leaving, so he was glad that he had decided at an earlier time. If Stiles wanted to do everything, that was going to take some time. 

After getting inside, the two went right to buying their wristbands for all of the rides. For each person, it was twenty dollars, so Stiles stood just a little behind Derek, getting his wallet out to pay for his own. 

Just as he was pulling out a twenty, Derek had stepped up to the booth and was saying "Two please," and handing over the mandatory forty dollars. Stiles looked at the other man incredulously, not even stopping when the bored looking teenager wrapped the band around his wrist. 

"What was that?" Stiles asked once they were out of earshot from the people at the booth. 

Derek looked at him like he had no idea where this was coming from. "I'm taking you out on a date, I'm paying for you."

Stiles put a finger right in front of Derek's face, "Anything else we do here, I get to pay, is that understood?"

Derek smirked, knowing that what they were going to do here was going to need very little money. The only thing Stiles would get to pay for that night would be any games that they decided to play, and unless they played quite a few games, he wasn't going to pay as much as he wanted. "Fine," Derek said, and started walking toward the Ferris wheel.

"The Ferris wheel first?" Stiles asked, taking his place next to Derek. 

"Did you want to do it last?"

"We can do it twice."

The two of them got on, sharing a compartment. The two looked out over the fairgrounds, noting how small everyone looked, and telling each other stories about other times they had gone on the Ferris wheel. 

"Every time we would come to the fair when I was little, the Ferris wheel was where we started," Derek said, smiling. "And every time my dad would get out of his seat and start moving around, causing the whole compartment to swing. I wasn't afraid of heights, and I'm not now, but that still scared the shit out of me. One time, my older sister threw up because she was so scared that we were going to fall."

Stiles laughed. "Scott and I always waited until we were about to go home. It looks so cool from up here when it's dark and you can see all of the lights below. The whole place is lot up in different colors and everyone is having a good time."

The two kept sharing memories until the end of the ride. 

After the Ferris wheel, Stiles dragged Derek to the barns. Stiles’s favorite was the horses, specifically the large horses, so that was where they went first. The two stopped at every stall that had a horse inside and visited. Stiles managed not to hurt or embarrass himself. 

The two travelled through the rest of the animal barns, and the. Derek got dragged to the games.

"I get to pay for these," Stiles said, stopping at a game and handing the man working it enough money for the two of them. 

The game was simple enough; all they had to do was point water guns at a target and get as much water into the bullseye as possible. The longer they could keep it there, the more water would fill the balloon. The first person to fill the balloon won a prize. 

Derek got his balloon filled first ("maybe if you hadn't been laughing so hard you would've won," he said, laughing at the pout on Stiles’s face) and won a small, stuffed wolf. Stiles wanted to laugh, or maybe cry, at the little thing because how ironic was it that his date would win a stuffed wolf?

As the two walked away, Derek smiled over at Stiles. "Here," he said, handing the small, gray and white wolf to Stiles, "I won it for you."

Stiles laughed and took the toy. "I'll call it Derek."

Derek let out a small laugh, a smile gracing his face, and pulled Stiles to the Ferris wheel once again. 

"Are we getting ready to go?" Stiles asked. 

"Yeah, this was only part one of the date."

"So there's a part two?"

Derek nodded. 

This time, when they got on the ride, the two didn’t only share a compartment, they shared a seat. 

...

Part two of the date turned out to be going to diner at a small diner at ten o’clock. Stiles was excited, ready to continue the amazing date he was having with Derek, and Derek looked nervous again. Or as nervous as he could when he kept his emotions blocked off from everyone else with one well controlled expression.

“I know you always eat diner food but I saw this place and thought it might be nice for a date.”

“Don’t worry about it. I love diner food.”

Derek opened the door for Stiles, which Stiles of course picked on him for but was very pleased by it.

On the outside, the diner looked small, but on the inside it seemed so much bigger. There were numerous booths set around the place, and counters with stools in the center. Everything was red and white, the booth seats, the stools, the tables, the counters, the wall tiles, the menus, and the signs. The entire place was covered in the two colors excluding the wall of plaques that had the names of the people who had managed to eat the twenty four scoop ice cream sundae. The shiny, golden plaques were mounted on a large, piece of shining wood, which was attached to the wall. There were at least forty plaques, and at least a hundred blank ones just waiting to be filled.

Stiles led Derek back to a booth and immediately picked up a menu.

“I’ve heard their ice cream is good,” Derek said, looking over the top of the menu, sneaking a glance at Stiles.

Stiles nodded, pulling his bottom lip in between his teeth. “Are we going to eat or have ice cream?”

“Whatever you want.”

Rolling his eyes, Stiles said, “Then why don’t we get food and then we can share a sundae or something?”

Derek nodded and put his menu down.

“Or we could do that twenty four scoop thing, y’know, together?” Stiles said, keeping his own menu in front of his face so that Derek couldn’t see him. He didn’t know why, but for some reason bringing this up made him feel embarrassed.

“Let’s do it.”

When a young waitress came over to take their order, Stiles said that they were going to do the challenge. She looked excited and called out to one of her colleagues.

“These young men are going to do it!” she yelled, getting the attention of everyone in the place.

Stiles wished she had used better wording.

Within ten minutes, a monster of a sundae was being brought out to Derek and Stiles’s table. Two people were carrying it, being careful not to spill anything. By the looks of it, there was every type of ice cream on there: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, chocolate chip, rocky road, mint, cookie dough, and then some that Stiles didn’t recognize. Then the ice cream was topped with different types of sauces: chocolate, peanut butter, strawberry, caramel, and more.

To top the sundae off there was a thick layer of whipped cream, and numerous cherries.

“The two of you have an hour to finish this,” the young waitress said with a smile. “Good luck.”

“I guess we better start this then,” Stiles said, holding his spoon up.

“I guess we should,” Derek said, holding his spoon the same way that Stiles was.

With matching grins, the two dug in.

An hour later, the sundae was finished, and Stiles was groaning loudly at how full he felt.

“I’m going to die Derek,” he said as the two walked out to Derek’s car.

“You are not,” Derek grumbled as Stiles bumped into him.

“I really am. That was way too much ice cream for one person to eat.”

“Think about the people that finished it themselves.”

Stiles groaned, getting into the Camaro and buckling his seat belt. “They must have starved themselves first. There is no way one person could eat that much ice cream.”

The corners of Derek’s lips lifted into a hint of a smile. “Take a nap on the way home if you want to.”

Stiles curled into his seat, wrapping his arms around his stomach. “That sounds like a perfect idea.”

In no time Stiles was asleep in the passenger seat and Derek was driving back to Carla’s house, listening to the sounds of Stiles’s gentle breathing.

…

When the two stopped in front of Carla’s house, Derek had to shake Stiles awake. He started gently pushing Stiles shoulder, but when all Stiles did was groan and turn his head further into the seat, Derek started shoving a bit harder. Eventually, Stiles woke up and got out of the car.

Stiles didn’t expect Derek to get out of the car too and follow him up the small sidewalk.

As soon as Stiles got in front of the front door, he turned around and looked at Derek. “I don’t put out on the first date,” he said, turning around and putting a hand on the doorknob.

Just before Stiles had the chance to open the door, Derek grabbed onto the younger man’s sleeve and yanked just hard enough to pull Stiles back to him. Of course, being Stiles, he tripped as soon as he turned around and ended up falling right against Derek. The corners of Derek’s mouth lifted up into a small smile, and the man leaned in the little bit needed to press his lips against Stiles’s.

“I wasn’t asking you to,” he said, putting Stiles back upright and walking back to his Camaro.

The minute Stiles was inside the house, he slid down the door, letting out a sigh on the way down. If anyone asked him about it though, he would deny it until he was blue in the face.


	8. Chapter 8

Until the sun had set and Stiles noticed the large, gray, shining mass in the sky surrounded by the smaller twinkling stars, Stiles didn't realize that it was the Full Moon. Lately, if Stiles was thinking of something that related to supernatural beings, it was something related to his own predicament. He thought about what happened with Brian a lot, and had had a few nightmares highlighting the event and making it seem scarier than it had been. He had thought about Ally and how she was doing. Was she becoming a badass hunter and hunting werewolves every night? Was she out tonight, looking for enemies? And then he thought about what he thought he knew about what was going on, and stressed about what he still didn't know. 

With all that, he hadn't found a lot of time to think about how close it had been getting to the full moon. 

Carla had gone out with a few of her friends and wouldn't be back until late, so Stiles had nothing to do. After looking at the full moon for about ten minutes, Stiles decided to risk it and go to Derek's. 

Derek was staying in a house that belonged to one of his aunts and uncles. The house was one that the family owned, and wasn't currently using since it was more of a fall residence. It was small, just one level and a basement, which was fine since Derek didn't need a three story mansion when he wasn't going to live in town forever. The whole house was white, the outside walls, the inside walls, the garage. The only things that were exceptions were the roof of the garage and the roof of the house. It was set on an acre, and there was a swing set out in the back yard. Stiles could imagine Derek's cousins playing on it. 

When Stiles got to the house, all of the lights were out. With the white color of everything, and all of the full trees, the place didn't look depressing or scary, but it was still odd for Derek to have all of the lights off. Stiles’s first thought was that maybe Derek wasn't actually home, but the Camaro was sitting in the driveway, so unless Derek had went for a run, he was definitely home. 

Stiles walked up to the front door and knocked. Derek had told him that he didn't need to knock, that he could just walk in, but Stiles wanted to try for courtesy the first time that he had come to Derek's house unannounced. 

There was no answer to Stiles’s knocking, so he opened the unlocked door and went ahead and walked in. 

There was no sign of Derek, but his shoes were sitting in front of the door. Stiles didn't know where Derek was, but he knew that the man was inside the house. 

Stiles walked around, poking his head into every room, hoping that he would see Derek in the next one that he checked. One after one, Stiles looked in all of the rooms on the first level, and saw Derek in none of them. He wasn't asleep in the master bedroom or on the couch, the television was off, he wasn't doing anything in the kitchen, and he wasn't in the bathroom. The last place for Stiles to check was the basement, and for some reason he was apprehensive about checking. In his experience, if there was anything supernatural in a house, it was probably going to be in the basement, especially if it was the full moon. If there was a basement, that was the best place to lock a werewolf that didn't have control. 

As Stiles opened the door to the basement and started walking down the stairs, he muttered _Derek isn't a werewolf, Derek isn't a werewolf_ over and over, like it had become his mantra and was going to keep him fearless on this journey. 

Stiles stepped off the last stair and looked around. At first glance, Stiles thought that Derek wasn't there. There wasn't anyone down here, but it looked nice. The basement was fully furnished, tan carpet laid, nice looking white walls, and a flat screen television placed against one wall. A sound system was set up around the television, and there were two sets of about twenty DVDs laid on either side of the sound system. 

Across the room from where Stiles had come from was a door. It looked like all of the rest of the doors in the house, white wood with a shining, golden handle, but Stiles could hear faint sounds coming from the other side of this door. Since he hadn't heard anything coming from behind any of the other doors, Stiles instantly knew that whatever it led to, that's where Derek was. He walked up to it and slowly opened it, revealing a Derek who was naked, hairier than usual, and straining against layers of chains. 

To say that Stiles was surprised was an understatement. It shouldn't have made him mad to find out that Derek was a werewolf, the rational part of his brain knew that. There was no way that Derek could have known that it was safe to tell Stiles, there was no way for Derek to know that Stiles’s friends were werewolves and it wasn't a new thing for him. So Stiles knew that he shouldn't be angry with Derek for not telling him. But he was. 

When Stiles had walked into the room, Derek had been hairy, red eyes glowing, and claws poking out where his nails should have been. Now, after Derek had noticed the rage coming off of Stiles in waves, he had been able to turn back, becoming almost completely human again. 

"Stiles," he panted out, "What are you doing here?"

"I was going to spend some time with you, but you look a little tied up at the moment." Stiles turned on his heel and walked straight out of the house. 

On his way out he heard Derek let out a roar, but just kept walking.

…

When Stiles got back to Carla’s house, she still wasn’t home. Through his anger, he managed to realize that it was better that she wasn’t since, hopefully, by the time she did come home, he would be back to his normal, happy self. For the moment, he was content with walking through the house, slamming doors, and playing music obnoxiously loud. Banging around helped settle his anger, but it didn’t make it go away fully.

Part of him was still angry that Derek hadn’t told him anything, and part of him was mad at himself for being mad at Derek. One half of him was screaming at him saying that something should have tipped Derek off, that he should have been able to smell the other werewolves, that he should have been able to smell the wolfsbane that Stiles had touched. Then the other part of him said that even though Derek might have been able to smell the other werewolves, that didn’t mean that he had any way of knowing that Stiles knew that he had been around the supernatural creatures. Not everyone in Beacon Hills knew about the resident furries, and they probably smelt of the ones that they had come in contact with. And since Stiles had no way of knowing whether or not wolfsbane had a distinct smell, he had no way of knowing that Derek could have smelt it on him.

With the indecisiveness added to his anger, Stiles was still angry an hour later when Carla walked into the house.

“Woah,” Carla shouted to get Stiles’s attention over the music, “What have you been doing?”

Stiles looked over at his friend, noticing how the sparkling, purple dress that she wore shined in the lighting, and how messy her curly hair had become. She was smiling, which was a good thing considering Stiles had made a bit of a mess of the house.

The doors were all open; bathroom, bedroom, and closets, there were magazines littering the floor that Stiles had attempted to read, he had left an open bag of chips sitting on the table and some of them had crushed around the bag and on the floor.

Stiles panted. “I got angry,” he stated.

Carla laughed, taking off her high heels. “Yeah, I can see that. What were you mad about?”

“Derek.”

Carla’s smile fell from her face. “Give me a minute, I’ll go change and you can tell me what happened.”

The girl started walking to her room, but Stiles stopped her. Without her knowing about the existence of werewolves, there was no way for him to explain what had made him so angry. He knew that she would not be satisfied with a vague answer, but that was really all he could offer her.

“What are you doing? Don’t you want to talk about it?”

Stiles sighed and gave Carla a tentative smile. “No, not really.”

“Alright,” Carla said, turning away and walking into her bedroom. She stopped inside the door and turned around, small smile on her face. “Then I can break out the tubs of ice cream and we can watch some sappy rom-coms.”

Stiles smiled back at her. “Sounds like a plan.”

…

The next morning, Stiles didn’t go to the diner. He knew that he could have gone earlier; around the time he had been going when he had first came into town, but it didn’t feel right. When he woke up, he didn’t really feel like getting out of bed, much less getting ready and going to a diner to eat breakfast. So instead he got out the eggs that Carla had bought at the grocery store the day before and set out to make an omelet.

With the television blaring, Stiles missed all of Derek’s calls. And he didn’t even have to ignore them.

…

When Derek got to the diner, he had just stepped into the building when he began looking around for the familiar head of brown hair. He knew that people were standing behind him, waiting for Derek to move so that they could enter the building too, but he didn’t care about them.

For the last few months, after a full moon, Derek was apprehensive about leaving the house, or even unchaining himself. Since he had lost most of his anger toward the Argent’s, he had lost his anchor, and hadn’t found a new one yet. Without it, he was having a hard time during the full moon, and trusted himself less and less. Before, he hadn’t even thought about chaining himself up, but that had been when he could control his shift.

Any normal day after for the last few months, Derek wouldn’t have left the house, but with Stiles showing up and seeing him, he knew he had to go talk to him. He had been hoping that Stiles would still show up at the diner, but after the fourth glance around the room, he knew that Stiles hadn’t come.

With an even broodier glare than normal, Derek took the same seat he normally did.

Carla came over to Derek’s table immediately and took a seat. The kitchen already had Derek’s order, so there was no reason for her to take it.

“What did you do to him last night?”

Derek glared at her. “I didn’t do anything.” _Half way true_ , his brain thought.

“When I came home, my house was torn up and when I asked him what he had been so mad about, all he said was your name. He wouldn’t tell me what you did, and I don’t expect you to, but I want you to know that he was so happy when he came home from that date. I thought you were going to keep making him happy, but I guess I was wrong.”

Before Derek could even think of a reply, Carla left. A different waitress brought his food out to him.

…

People always say that the best thing that you can do when something goes wrong is go on with your life. You should get right back into the habit of what you did before it happened, because then maybe you won’t think about it as much. Compared to everything that had happened in Derek’s life so far, Sties finding out that he was a werewolf and being pissed about it was nothing, but Stiles had been a good point in Derek’s life, and Derek would have liked it to stay that way. And it would have if he had warned the boy not to come to his house on the night of the full moon.

But that’s how Derek ended up showing up at work on a day that he didn’t need to work. He had taken the day off because of the full moon, but Stiles had kind of interrupted his plan.

When he walked into the low building, his co-workers all looked at him. He supposed that he looked like shit, pale skin, bags under his eyes, and the works that come when you don’t get enough sleep due to the fact that you are chained to a wall with thick metal chains, laced with wolfsbane, and you don’t want to, and can’t, fall asleep.

No one said anything as Derek walked over to his desk and grabbed the files that were sitting there. He worked as a sort of secretary for the police department, organizing case files and making sure that they got where they needed to be. It was a meaningless job, and one that Derek didn’t need, but it kept him busy.

One of his co-workers decided to come over and talk to him, about an hour after he had shown up, and after he was fully absorbed in his work.

“What are you doing here Hale?” the guy asked, leaning over onto Derek’s desk, small mouth becoming upturned in a smile.

“Needed something to do,” Derek replied, his voice coming close to a growl.

“How did your date go? We assume that was why you needed to take last night off.” The guy’s smirk grew like this was an inside joke between the two of them.

The more Derek had to talk, the closer his voice got to growl. “My date went fine, but it wasn’t last night.”

Cat calls went through the office and Derek felt himself slipping. He could feel the change trying to take control, his wolf didn’t like these people talking, or thinking, about Stiles in the way that they were. His wolf wanted them to shut up. His wolf wanted to get out of there.

“Coming in was a mistake,” he said to himself, closing the case file he was looking through and putting it in the pile that held all of the other case files that he hadn’t organized yet.

Derek got up from his desk and everyone in the room stopped their loud, obnoxious laughing, toning it down so that they were all just chuckling in unison.

They all watched him leave, and even when Derek had gotten into his car he could still hear them talking about him. They were wondering who the lucky girl was, and wondering the exact details of what had happened.

Derek peeled out of the driveway, knowing exactly where he was going. Straight to Carla’s house, straight to Stiles, and hopefully to getting Stiles to forgive him.

…

When Derek got to Carla’s house, he couldn’t quite pull himself out of his car, so he sat at the curb for about ten minutes, thinking about what exactly he was going to tell Stiles. He still had no idea when he got out of the car.

He still didn’t have an idea when he got to the steps leading up to the door, but that became a thought in the back of his mind when he realized he was being pushed back. He looked down at the ground, expecting to see black powder, but instead saw nothing. _I must not have been the only one holding something back_ , Derek thought.

Derek stared at the ground for a few minutes, not believing that there was a way that the mountain ash was disguised, and wondering how he was supposed to get Stiles’s attention now. There was no way he was just going to stand there and look like an idiot to people who were driving by. Then there was the fact that anyone driving by would probably think that Derek was going to rob the house.

A minute later, when Derek realized he was living in the twenty-first century and there was such a thing as a cell phone, he felt like an idiot.

 _Could you come outside?_ Derek sent Stiles.

A few minutes later, with no reply to Derek’s text, Stiles opened the front door, a smirk on his face.

“This is a pretty good security system you have set up here,” Derek said, standing a few feet away from the front door of Carla’s house.

Stiles shrugged. “It keeps all the big meanies away.”

“Could we talk?” Derek asked.

“I don’t want to,” Stiles said, crossing his arms over his chest. He knew he sounded a bit childish, but he didn’t really care. “I’m still mad at you.”

“I know, that’s why I want to talk. I want to make this up to you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Stiles stepped out of the door and walked up to Derek. Being a werewolf, Derek couldn’t get past the line of mountain ash that Stiles had used to surround the house. If Derek wanted to get inside, he would have to make Stiles happy here, because otherwise he wasn’t going to break the line. If Derek couldn’t appease Stiles outside of the house, he wasn’t going to get inside the house.

“Let’s start over then,” Derek said, reaching his hand out in front of him, waiting for Stiles to take it. “I’m Derek Hale.”

Stiles took Derek’s outstretched hand and shook it. “Hello Derek Hale, I’m Stiles Stilinski. No, that is not my real first name and no, I’m not going to tell you what it really is.”

After going over to the side of the house and swiping his shoe covered foot through the line of mountain ash, Stiles turned around and led Derek through the front door. He took the werewolf into the kitchen, motioning for Derek to sit down.

“Would you like anything? Coffee? Water? Milk?”

“Coffee would be great.”

After getting them both a mug of coffee, Stiles sat down at the table, across from Derek, sitting just like they would have if they were sitting at the diner. There was a bit of tension in the air, even though Derek’s attempt at fixing the damage done by not telling Stiles that he was a werewolf was definitely working. Both of them wore small smiles, but their attention was focused on the coffee cups in their hands, not the conversation they should have been having, or each other.

“So where are you from?” Stiles prompted, still fiddling with his coffee cup, and not looking at Derek directly.

Derek looked at Stiles. “I’m from Beacon Hills and I’m a werewolf.”

Stiles’s smile grew and he raised his eyebrows. “Werewolves don’t exist Derek, don’t lie to me.”

“Would you like me to show you?”

“You can’t do that because you aren’t one.”

Derek locked eyes with Stiles and was surprised he didn’t feel silly doing this. He knew that Stiles was just teasing him because he had kept this a secret in the first place, so there was no reason to wolf out to make Stiles believe him. Doing something like this should have made him feel ridiculous, but it didn’t. Instead, he concentrated a bit until he could feel the change taking over. He let the hair grow down the sides of his face, and he let his human teeth turn into deadly canines, and let his blunt fingernails slip into claws. He even let his eyes flash bright red for a second, just for show.

“Werewolves do exist,” Stiles said, smirking.

Stiles’s smirk disappeared almost as quickly as it had come. "So why didn't you tell me? Couldn't you tell that I had been in contact with other werewolves?"

"Yeah, but that didn't mean you knew about them. You could've been best friends with a werewolf for years without knowing it. I had no way to tell."

Stiles nodded. "Okay, so tell me everything else. Start from the beginning."

"Okay," Derek said, smiling a little bit. "I was born a werewolf. Both of my parents were werewolves, my mom was the alpha of our pack, but not all of my siblings were werewolves. Some of them were humans."

Stiles’s mind buzzed, thinking of the article that he had read about Derek's family. When he had read it, he hadn't known that Derek was a werewolf, so now having that knowledge made him second guess some of the things about the fire. It had definitely been a homicide; whoever had set the fire had wanted the Hale's dead, but why? Had it been because some of them were werewolves? But what about the ones that weren't werewolves? Derek was the second oldest child, meaning that there had been young children, young, human children who had died in that fire. Had the arsonist known? Had they cared? Had it been just a regular person looking to kill someone, or had it been hunters, set on killing the Hale family? Stiles wanted answers to all of these questions, but he would have to wait to ask since Derek didn't know that he had read about the death on his entire family. 

"My family was killed in a house fire, set by hunters. And it was all my fault."

Stiles scrunched his face. "How could it have been your fault?"

When Derek looked at him, all of his mental barriers were down. Stiles could see the hurt that shone in his eyes just from this conversation. Stiles hated himself for asking the question and not just letting go of the topic, letting Derek go on with his story. He would have told Derek to stop if he needed to, but Derek didn't give him the chance. 

"Do you know the Argents?" Derek asked. 

Stiles had no idea what they had to do with Derek's family all dying, but he played along. He thought of Allison and her dad and her mom and her grandfather and her aunt. Allison was really the only Argent that they all trusted, and that was tentative sometimes. After her grandfather had practically brainwashed her and made her into a killing machine, no one was completely happy with trusting her again. That had been an awkward few months. 

"Yeah, I know the Argents. Scott is dating one of them."

Derek's eyes flashed. "Do you know about the aunt that died a while ago?"

Stiles nodded. 

"I dated her. I let her in and showed her my family, and then she killed them all. All of them except me and my older sister."

"That doesn't mean it's your fault Derek."

"It does Stiles. I thought I loved her and she loved me but it turned out that she just wanted to kill my family."

"What happened after that?" Stiles asked, feeling desperate for a subject change.

Derek took a few deep breaths and looked a bit calmer. It didn't look like he was about to wolf out anymore, so that was a plus. "Laura and I left Beacon Hills. We went to an ally pack in New York and stayed with then for a while. And it was great. We finished high school and everything was fine, but Laura always wanted to go back to Beacon Hills because we had left our comatose uncle there. I didn't want to go back especially since the Argents were still there, but she persisted and then decided that she would go without me if she had to. And she did."

"And you went after her?" Stiles guessed. 

"Yeah, she was the last family member I had. Of course when I found her I found out that she was dead too." Stiles saw Derek's mental walls go back up and prepared himself for Derek to come unhinged again. "I figured the Argents had killed her so I buried her and left again. I couldn't stand to be back in that town."

"Dude, you really should have stayed," Stiles said. "The Argents didn't kill her."

Derek's eyes flashed. "I know that now Stiles. If I had known that they hadn't killed her I would have stayed and helped."

"So you know what we went through?"

"I didn't know that it was you and your friends, but yes I know what you went through."

"All because of your comatose uncle."  Stiles put a sarcastic emphasis on comatose. He might have been in a coma at one time, but he didn't stay that way. Part of Stiles thought that Derek should have known his uncle wasn't going to stay in a coma forever. The man had been a werewolf, Derek should have known that eventually his healing was going to kick in and he would wake up. It might have taken awhile, but he had still woken up, and when he had he had been hell bent for revenge. 

"So after that I went back to New York and stayed with that pack."

"What made you come back to this side of the States then?"

Derek fidgeted a bit, staring down at his coffee cup. Stiles got the impression that whatever Derek was about to say, he didn't really want to share. 

"It's a bit difficult to explain."

"It's not like we don't have time."

Derek sighed, sounding a bit frustrated, but when he looked back up at Stiles; his face was open again, not shut down. "I'm sure you've heard about werewolf mates right?"

"They mate for life, they can be chosen or destined, that sort of thing?"

"Yeah," Derek said, then pausing to take a drink of his coffee. "If you're lucky, you find the mate you are destined to be with, like a soul mate sort of thing, if not you can still pick someone to be your mate."

"So you can be werewolf married?"

"Sure, anyway, before you find your mate, there's a feeling you get when you're near them. You feel safe, content, and their scent reminds you of home. Overall, they make you feel really happy, even if you don't even know who they are. If you're close enough, you'll feel it, but the further away you get from them, the less you'll be able to feel it. My mate was in Beacon Hills and I knew that from a young age."

"Why didn't you find them?" Stiles asked, interrupting Derek. 

"Well at first I was too young, and I knew they weren't a werewolf and their parents weren't werewolves so I would have to wait until they were older." 

Derek paused and Stiles took the pause to ask questions. 

"That was just at first? And why would that keep you from finding them? Couldn't you have just become friends with them?"

"There was a lot going on in their life, I could feel that much. That's another thing; there was a sort of one way bond where I could feel a little bit of what they were feeling. My mate was going through the death of someone; I knew that because they were stricken with grief for a long time. And they still were a little bit every time I went back to Beacon Hills. For a while though, they had terrible panic attacks. It was horrible for a long time. And then the fire happened and I just wanted to leave, and then after that I didn't feel like I deserved to find my mate."

"Could you still feel their feelings while you were in New York?"

"Just enough to know that they weren't as sad and they weren't getting panic attacks. At great distances you can still feel the stronger emotions and things like panic attacks, but not the smaller things."

Stiles nodded, thinking how he had just learned a lot about mates that the books hadn't been able to tell him. Granted, those weren't really the things he had been looking for, but they pertained to what he wanted to know. Maybe he could ask Derek about what Brian had meant. 

"Can being mates be forced?"

Derek's eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. "Yeah, why do you want to know?"

It was Stiles’s turn to fidget (again). "A couple weeks ago, when I was staying at a bed and breakfast, this guy came to my room and said something about mating with me."

Derek looked surprised, or at least as surprised as he could look without really changing his facial expression. It was all really in his eyes and his eyebrows. "How did you get out of it?"

"I got away and then ran."

"What did he say to you when he came to your room?”

"Um," Stiles said, mind working overtime so that he could remember what had happened. "He just said that I was going to be his mate. I don't really remember what he said."

Derek nodded. "Why is it that you had to leave Beacon Hills anyway?"

"A pack of omegas came to Beacon Hills and said that they were going to take me to an Alpha pack because they wanted something to do with me. When I asked what, they just laughed. But after what happened at the bed and breakfast, I thought it had something to do with my scent and being a mate."

"Sometimes werewolves steal each other’s intended mates because there's a scent that mates have when they have been around each other. If you were in the vicinity of your mate, you'll have that scent and these other Alphas will want to steal you from your mate."

"Great, so I'm like werewolf nip," Stiles grumbled. 

Derek laughed. "Sounds like it." Derek paused, looking at Stiles as he smiled back at him. "So we're good?"

Stiles nodded. "Yeah we're good."

The two sat in silence for a minute. Not knowing what to say next. 

"Do you have plans for the rest of the day?"

Derek raised an eyebrow. "No, why?"

With a smile on his face, Stiles stood up from the table, walked over to where Derek was sitting, and put out his hand for the other man to take. "We're gonna watch _Star Wars_."


	9. Chapter 9

When Carla got home around two o'clock, it was to the sight of Derek and Stiles, practically cuddling on the couch, with _Star Wars_ playing on the TV. Even though she was still angry with Derek, and even though she didn't know exactly what he had done, she couldn't help but smile at the two. They were lying sideways on the two person couch, with Derek against the back of the couch, holding himself up with his arm, and Stiles lying on his back in front of Derek. Without even being able to hear the two, Carla could tell that Stiles was talking just from the way that he kept waving his hands around, and how Derek kept grabbing them to keep them from hitting him in the face. 

"Are you going to make everyone watch those movies with you until everyone has seen them?" Carla asked, leaning against the doorframe, smirking. 

Stiles moved his head so he was looking up at her, upside down, from where he was laying on the couch. "Yes I am. It is an injustice if you haven't seen then."

Carla rolled her eyes. "I know Stiles, that's why you made me watch them with you." She pushed away from the doorframe, walking toward her room. "Nice to see you again Derek."

"Nice seeing you too."

"I'm going out with some of my friends tonight and probably won't be in till late, and I may not even come back," Carla said, walking back into the room a few minutes later. She had changed out of her jeans and white t-shirt and was now wearing a tight black skirt and a deep purple shirt. 

"Have fun," Stiles said, laughing. 

"Not as much as you."

Stiles was blushing as Carla laughed her way out of the house. 

Derek looked down at him. "Are you going to put more mountain ash around the house? To keep other werewolves out?"

"I don't know," Stiles said, shrugging, except for it made him look like he was a slug who was trying to dance. "I only have so much and my supplier, oh my god that sounds like I'm getting drugs, is back in Beacon Hills."

"But you need to be protected. You still don't know why people want to kidnap you; you need to keep yourself safe."

"I can't keep putting a large ring around the house though Derek."

"Then you need to start moving."

Stiles looked down, fiddling with the hem of the shirt he was wearing. "I don't want to leave yet Derek. I don't want to leave you and I don't want to leave Carla."

"You're going to have to leave Carla eventually, you know that right," Derek said, his normal gruff voice sounding soft and almost vulnerable. Almost like he was trying to calm a wild animal. 

Stiles paused, looking up at Derek, and thinking over what the older man had just said. "You didn't say anything about what was going to happen with you," he said.

Derek had been hoping that Stiles wouldn’t realize what he had said. "Maybe I'll end up coming with you."

"I'd like that."

...

For the rest of the night, Stiles actually made Derek watch the movies. His mind kept coming up with things to say; things about the current state of the movie, things that would spoil the ending of the movie, and things that he wanted to ask Derek. He kept glancing up at Derek, mainly to make sure that he was watching the movie (there were a couple times that Derek hadn't been watching the movie, he had been watching Stiles) but partly because he liked to look at Derek. Derek was hot, there was no denying that with his dark hair and dark stubble that was present even if he had shaved only an hour before and his green eyes and his extremely expressive eyebrows and his cute, rounded ears, and pretty much everything else. Derek was hot, and Stiles wasn't ashamed to admit it (to himself at least). 

Stiles shook himself a little, and looked back at the screen. 

"Are you cold?" Derek asked, looking down at him. 

Stiles cupped his chin and turned Derek's head back to the screen. "Watch the movie Derek."

Derek huffed out a breath but did what Stiles told him to. 

Finding out that Derek was a werewolf made Stiles think about telling Carla about everything again. He hadn’t had to think about it since he figured out that he could disguise the mountain ash, but he was thinking about it now. Until his dad had found out, he had always thought that keeping him in the dark would keep him safe, especially since his father was usually on the inside of the situation without knowing what exactly he was in on. He had thought that not telling his dad would have kept him safer, but after a while, and a lot of badgering from Scott, he realized that by keeping his dad in the dark he was actually putting him at more of a liability since his dad was fighting the unknown and not knowing about it. The same pertained to Carla. What if the omega pack was still after Stiles, and they were tracking him right now, but wouldn’t find where he was until after he had left town. What if they found Carla and tortured her into telling them where Stiles was, and she didn’t know. She would be terrified, and would be finding out about werewolves in the worst way, and would most likely get killed because the pack would just assume that she was a really good liar. Stiles obviously didn’t want that to happen, but until now he hadn’t known how to tell Carla, and make her believe him. Now that he knew Derek was a werewolf, he had a way to tell his friend about everything that she could go up against.

“Derek,” Stiles said, poking the man in the arm to get his attention.

“Hm?” Derek replied, looking away from the screen and down at Stiles.

“I haven’t told Carla about werewolves.”

Derek raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“I didn’t tell her because I didn’t know how. It wasn’t like I had a way that I could tell her that she would believe. If I had told her that werewolves were real she probably would have thought that I had lost my mind.” Stiles paused, working up to what he needed to ask Derek. “Could you help me tell her?”

“You mean wolf out in front of her? After you tell her? Have you ever told anyone before?”

“Yeah, I had to tell my dad. But with my best friend being a werewolf, I just told my dad and then Scott wolfed out. If I hadn’t had Scott, my dad wouldn’t have believed me.”

“Alright,” Derek said, nodding. “We can tell her in the morning.”

“At work? You can’t exactly wolf out in the middle of the diner.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I wonder if you are stupid Stiles.”

Stiles glared up at Derek. “Then when does ‘in the morning’ mean?”

“When she wakes up.”

“How are you going to tell her when she wakes up? She wakes up before I do Derek, and I would have to call you to tell you that she is awake, and then you would have to drive all the way here.”

Derek just rolled his eyes again.

“Why do you keep doing that? This is the only way-oh wait,” Stiles said, making a face that definitely said he had finally caught on. “Where are you going to sleep?”

“Wherever you want me to sleep.”

“I don’t like having that much responsibility.”

“Then I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“You don’t need to sleep on the couch Derek.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Just watch the movie Stiles.”

…

The two of them didn’t sleep in the same bed. Derek had told Stiles that he could sleep on the couch, but Stiles said the couch wasn’t comfortable enough for Derek to sleep on so instead of continuing to fight, they compromised and Derek slept on the floor. Stiles found pillows and blankets in the hall closet and laid multiple blankets down on the floor to make it softer.

“Why don’t you just agree with me and say you’ll sleep up here with me?”

“Because.”

“That’s not a good reason Derek.”

“It is to me.”

“Well I don’t agree. Why can’t you just sleep up here?”

Derek rolled over onto his left side, sliding his left arm underneath his pillow. “I could tell the thought made you uncomfortable so I told you I would sleep on the couch but you wouldn’t let me do that.”

“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable.”

“How long have you been away from home?”

“A few weeks?”

“Have you already forgotten that werewolves can tell when you’re lying?”

Stiles sighed. “Fine, goodnight Derek.”

“Goodnight Stiles.”

The next morning, Carla stuck her head into the room, like she did every day, to tell Stiles that she was leaving for work. Normally when she did this, she saw Stiles spread eagle on the bed, almost all of the blankets either on the floor or hanging off the bed. This time though, she saw exactly what she normally saw, with something extra. Lying on the floor was Derek, who was already awake. She looked at him, raising an eyebrow.

When he saw her, he got up from the floor, looked over at Stiles, and walked out of the room.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“We need to tell you something.”

Carla narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Why don’t you go sit at the table and I’ll get Stiles?”

Carla stared at Derek like she didn’t want to do what he told her to, but eventually walked back out to the kitchen.

A few minutes later Derek and Stiles sat down. Stiles looked fully awake already, which was weird since normally he could barely function without a cup of coffee. He was also exceedingly antsy, causing him to pace around the kitchen for a few minutes as Derek and Carla watched him from their seats at the table.

“Stiles come on, I do have to go to work today,” Carla said, starting to get antsy just from watching Stiles.

“Alright, well you are not going to believe this. Even with Derek here you are not going to believe this. Or maybe you will, it will definitely help having Derek here. If I hadn’t been there when it happened to Scott, I wouldn’t have believed it either. And of course my dad believed it after Scott and I explained everything.”

“Stiles stop, come on, just tell me.”

Stiles looked over at Carla and closed his eyes, sighing. “Werewolves are real,” he said, keeping his eyes closed.

“What? No they aren’t. Seriously Stiles, you kept me here to tell me this?”

Carla looked at Derek, expecting him to agree with her, saying something about how Stiles was being stupid, and had just wanted to mess with her, but when she looked over at him she didn’t really see Derek. The person sitting opposite her was definitely Derek Hale, but he wasn’t at the same time. The Derek Hale that she knew didn’t have course, black hair trailing down the sides of his face, and he didn’t have fangs, and he didn’t have claws, and he didn’t have bright, red eyes. The Derek Hale she knew didn’t look like a monster.

“Holy shit, what are you?” she said, jumping up from her chair.

“He’s a werewolf,” Stiles said as Carla watched Derek’s features turn back into normal human ones.

“How, what, how are you not freaking out about this?” Carla said, turning toward Stiles.

“I told you, Scott is a werewolf. I’m friends with werewolves; I’m being chased by werewolves.”

Carla looked over at the clock. “When I get home,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Stiles, “You are telling me everything.”

Stiles nodded.

That night, when Carla got home, Stiles and Derek told Carla everything. Derek handled most of the questions that Carla had about werewolves, and helped Stiles when he tried to tell her about all of the other creatures he and his friends had encountered since Scott had become a werewolf. Stiles took over when they got to the part where she needed to know about the omega pack. Since Derek hadn’t been there in Beacon Hills for everything, he didn’t know anything that Stiles hadn’t told him. There wasn’t anything he could add either, because he had never heard of omegas sticking together in a pack form like that. So Stiles told Carla about why he had left home, she was thankful to finally have a straight answer, and he explained why she might be in danger even after he left.

“Before I leave I’ll make sure to circle your house in mountain ash so no werewolves will be able to enter it, but if you’re anywhere else they’ll still be able to get you.”

“Are you saying that you’re leaving now that you told me?” Carla asked, the first thing she had said since Stiles had started explaining what brought him here in the first place.

Stiles shook his head. “Not yet, but when I do you have to be careful.”

“Don’t worry about me Stiles,” she said, smiling a little sadly. “But I will definitely worry about you once you leave.”

…

It wasn’t until another three weeks went by that Stiles thought about leaving. Derek had mentioned leaving multiple times, and so had Carla, both of them arguing that it wasn’t safe for him to stay for as long as he had, much less even longer. Both of them just wanted him to be safe, and they wanted to make sure that the omega pack, or the alpha pack (who knew which one was after him now), didn’t find him. Derek kept saying that the longer he stayed in the same place, the closer they would be getting to finding him.

Stiles just didn’t want to leave. He didn’t want to stay in hotels again, he didn’t want to have to keep moving, he didn’t want to hide, he didn’t want to have to drop contact with Carla. Over the past months Stiles had become comfortable. He didn’t have to worry about staying in a hotel anymore since he was living with Carla. There weren’t any times where he had to talk out loud just so he wasn’t only in his head because he had Carla to talk to, and now he had Derek to talk to. He didn’t want to leave because it would be like leaving Beacon Hills again. It might be a little easier since he didn’t have as many people he was leaving behind, but he didn’t want to leave anyone behind anymore.

“You won’t be alone this time,” Derek told Stiles, pulling the younger man from his thoughts.

The two of them were sitting on the hood of Derek’s Camaro, staring up at the sky so that they wouldn’t have to look at each other. Stiles could tell that Derek was nervous, just being here, because every once in a while he would go to say something or he would go to touch Stiles, but he would pull back just as fast. Other than Derek’s relationship with Kate, Stiles didn’t know about any other past relationships Derek had been in, but his nervous behavior made Stiles wonder how many there had been. Derek seemed almost uncomfortable any time he and Stiles seemed to be getting intimate. Not the sort of intimate where they were about to have sex, but the kind of intimate where Derek could tell Stiles how he felt, or he could reach out and hold Stiles’s hand. It seemed like he didn’t know what to do, or if he was doing it right and Stiles wondered if Kate had anything to do with that. Was Derek worried that if he got close to Stiles, Stiles was going to take away something that was important to Derek? Stiles didn’t know the answer, and didn’t know if he wanted to.

“Does that mean you decided that you’ll be coming with me?” Stiles asked, sweeping his eyes from the dark sky above them to Derek’s face.

“Yeah, I think I will.”

“Are you going to be looking for your mate? As we travel, I mean.”

Derek paused like he had to think about what Stiles had just asked. “Um, yeah, I think I will.”

“And what if you find them?” Stiles asked, already feeling vulnerable even though the question had just left his mouth.

Derek turned his head a little bit, just enough so he could see Stiles’s expression out of the corner of his eye. Derek already knew how Stiles felt about this question; he could feel the anxiety rolling off of the boy in waves. “I’m not sure,” he said, knowing that that wasn’t enough to settle Stiles’s nerves, but not knowing what else he could say.

“Oh.”

Stiles felt disappointed, the feeling coiling in his stomach like he had just been punched in the gut. In all honesty, he didn’t know what he had been expecting; Derek had told him about werewolf mates, and what it means to find the one that is meant for you. Stiles knew finding your mate was a big deal, but wasn’t what he had with Derek a big deal too?

“What will you do when we get back to Beacon Hills?”

“If I find them or if I don’t find them?”

“Either one.”

Derek’s expression turned to a thoughtful one, and Stiles wondered what he was thinking. Had he already thought about what he would do if he found his mate while he was traveling with Stiles, and dating Stiles, or was he just going to take the whole thing a step at a time? There was also the nagging little thought in the back of Stiles’s head that kept trying to convince him that Derek already knew who his mate was. Stiles couldn’t be sure, but sometimes he wondered how Derek could have lived in Beacon Hills with them for so long, and felt little bits of their emotions for so long, and not know exactly who they were.

“If I find them, I think I’ll move back to Beacon Hills. They grew up there, I grew up there, it seems to be a logical thing to do. If I don’t find them, I’m not sure if I’ll even continue looking once we go back to Beacon Hills.”

“Then what will you do?”

Derek looked at him, scrunching his eyebrows together in a confused expression. “What do you mean?”

“Will you move back to Beacon Hills even if you don’t find them? Will you go back to your aunt and uncle’s house and stay there? Will we keep dating, or will we break up?” Stiles said, just beginning to get all of his questions out. There were so many things running around in his head in that moment that he was surprised that those few questions hadn’t come out jumbled together and half finished.

Derek grabbed Stiles’s hands, even though how they were sitting made it a bit uncomfortable. “Hold on Stiles, you’re thinking about this way too much. If I don’t find them we will still be dating. Hell, I don’t even know if I do find them that I’ll break up with you. I’ve dated other people, and they weren’t my mate, my mate can wait if need be. I want to be with you okay?”

Stiles gulped, realizing that that had been the most serious thing that had been directed at him that Stiles had heard Derek say. “Okay,” he said, not knowing that else there was that he could say to that.

Derek nodded, letting go of one of Stiles’s hands, but still holding on to the other.

Maybe it was from the cold night air, or maybe it was from the nature of their conversation, and what Derek had just said, but Stiles shivered, his whole body feeling like it was convulsing.

“Are you cold?” Derek asked, after seeing Stiles shiver.

“Maybe a little,” Stiles said, rubbing his hands up and down his arms. He might have been really, really cold, but he didn’t want this to end. If it was up to Stiles, the two of them would have sat on the hood of the Camaro all night, talking or not talking, and they wouldn’t have gotten cold. Or at least he wouldn’t have, since he was pretty sure Derek felt just fine.

As if to prove Stiles right, Derek hopped off of the hood and walked over to Stiles’s side, all the while taking his jacket out. When he got next to Stiles, he grabbed the boy’s ankles, moving him around so his legs were hanging off the sides, and he was sitting up. Derek stood so that Stiles’s legs were in between his.

Without asking Stiles if he wanted the jacket, Derek maneuvered around the boy so that he could put the leather jacket on him. Stiles didn’t complain, even though he was being manhandled, instead he just laughed.

“Didn’t think I could do it for myself?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Of course I know that you can put a jacket on by yourself Stiles.” He paused, searching Stiles’s eyes, almost like he was asking permission for something. “I just wanted to do it for you.”

Stiles smiled at Derek, pulling the jacket closer around him. It was almost a perfect fit, but it was still a bit too big around his torso and a little long down his arms. With the torso, Derek was a bit bulkier than Stiles’s spaghetti build, but the arms would have been fine if they had fit Derek. Even when Derek wore the jacket, the sleeves came down over his fingers.

Stiles expected Derek to move away once he put the jacket on Stiles, but he didn’t. Instead, he placed his hands down on top of Stiles’s thighs, and leaned in. He looked up at Stiles, his mouth tugging up into a small smile, and then leaned in just a bit more. The kiss the two shared wasn’t anything much, just both pairs of lips touching and moving against each other, but Stiles felt the effects of it like an explosion that first went off in his stomach but quickly spread everywhere else.

When the two pulled away from each other, they were both smiling, Stiles’s smiling reaching all the way up to his eyes, and Derek’s just a bit larger than his normal quirked lips.

“Let’s get in the car now,” Derek said, grabbing Stiles’s hand and pulling on it gently. “You’ll be warmer in there.”

“Do we get to continue this?” Stiles said, wiggling his eyebrows.

Derek just rolled his eyes, a bit of laughter seeping out past his lips, and walked away, getting into the driver’s side of the car.

“You didn’t answer me!” Stiles said, but he didn’t expect an answer, he knew they were definitely going to continue.


	10. Chapter 10

“You know Stiles,” Carla said, trailing after him as he walked to his car, “You can always stay here if you really want to. I know I agreed with Derek about it being safer for you to leave, but we could always take the necessary precautions and we could make it safe for you to be here.”

Stiles sighed, putting his stuff into the back of the jeep. “I’m going to miss you too Carla, but I can’t stay. I want to, I really want to, but it wouldn’t be safe. It could get you hurt, and I could get hurt, and Derek could get hurt, and if I never go back to Beacon Hills I wouldn’t ever get to see or talk to my dad or any of my friends again. Not to mention I wouldn’t know what happened to them.” Stiles paused, really thinking about his last sentence. “Even now I don’t know what has happened to them. For all I know the omega pack could have called in the alpha pack and they could have killed everyone who had ever been close to me.”

Carla put her hand on Stiles’s arm, smiling up at him. Her smile was a little sad, but she was trying. “I know all of that Stiles, I just-” she ended with a shrug.

Stiles pulled her close, holding her in a hug for a few minutes. He didn’t let go of her until Derek pulled up in his Camaro.

Since Derek was going with Stiles, and not traveling in his own car, he would be leaving the Camaro at Carla’s house. At first they had planned on leaving it at his aunt and uncles since they were family and would definitely hold on to it for him, but somewhere along the way they had decided to leave it at Carla’s. This way, Stiles wouldn’t have to drive to Derek’s aunt and uncle’s, which would make his scent stronger there than it already was. They figured it was bad enough pulling Carla into this whole thing, Derek really didn’t need to lose any more family members.

“Are you ready?” Derek said, coming up next to Stiles and Carla and placing his hand on Stiles’s elbow. Stiles felt like he might be getting ready to pull him away if he had to.

Stiles nodded, looking at Carla again, with a smile on his face. “I probably won’t be able to contact you.”

“I know.”

“We might not ever talk again.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m going to miss you too,” Carla said, looking back and forth between Stiles and Derek. She focused on Derek first. “Don’t you dare hurt him. I may not have a way of hurting a werewolf physically, but I can sure as hell try.” She looked at Stiles. “Try to keep this one around, he’ll look good on your arm.”

Stiles laughed, rolling his eyes.

“Get going you two, and don’t forget to have at least a little fun,” Carla said, winking at the two of them as they got in the car.

Neither of them said anything until they got off of Carla’s road, and then it was Derek who was the first one to say something. He looked over at Stiles, catching the boy’s attention, and quirked an eyebrow at him. “You did tell her what this was going to entail didn’t you?” he asked.

Stiles nodded. “Why?”

“Just wondering why she thought we were going to have fun. We’re going to be cramped in a small car with each other for a while.”

“Who said that can’t be fun?” Stiles asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

Derek rolled his eyes. “I can’t imagine having any kind of fun in the car with you.”

“I can think of a few things that we could do,” Stiles said, again wiggling his eyebrows, feeling pretty sure that Derek had picked up on the hint the first time he had done it.

“Like what?” Derek said.

Stiles was fairly certain that Derek had smirked, just a little bit, when he asked the question. He knew exactly what Stiles was thinking of, but wanted to hear him say it. “We could do some puzzles,” Stiles said, getting a puzzled expression from Derek.

“You don’t want to do any puzzles?” he asked after it had been about five minutes and Derek hadn’t said anything in reply.

“We could do puzzles if you want to.”

“What if puzzles weren’t what I really wanted to do?”

Derek looked over at him for just a second before looking back at the road. “We could do that too.”

…

Unlike Stiles, Derek had a plan. Derek knew where they could go, and where they could stay, and how to keep them safe. When Stiles asked him how he knew this stuff, he said it had come in handy while he and Laura had been leaving Beacon Hills to get away from the Argents. Stiles really didn't care how he had this information; he just knew that Derek was using every resource he had to keep the two of them safe. If Stiles thought too much about it, it made him a little sad. One day Derek would find his mate and he and Stiles would be over and this would just be a memory that Stiles had. Stiles didn't want this to be just a memory.

Derek's first plan of action was to get them somewhere safe. Stiles had suggested that they go to a hotel, or maybe another bed and breakfast. They didn't need to stay there for as long as Stiles had in the first hotel after the bed and breakfast, just a single night. And if Derek thought someone, or something, was there that could pose a threat, they could leave. Stiles had given Derek all kinds of options as to how to keep them safe in a place with a ton of other people who happened to be strangers, but Derek wouldn't have it. He talked about knowing many of the packs around the area, he actually seemed to either know or know of most of the packs in California, and how he knew that they could go to one of them and get shelter with them. He suggested that they could either stay with one for a long time, maybe until they could figure something out about Stiles since they were pretty sure the mate thing wasn't the only thing the alphas were after, or they could stay with one pack for a few nights and continue on to another one and another one after that and so on. It didn't sound like a bad idea to Stiles, especially since he didn't know what they could do at a hotel on the night of the full moon, but he was nervous. The only werewolves he had ever been around were his friends and Derek. He hadn't grown up with werewolves, didn't know the etiquette of visiting a pack, and didn't know how he was supposed to treat other werewolves, especially alphas. He was worried that he would do something to piss them off and that would ruin the bonds that Derek still held with them. Stiles didn't want to be the reason that Derek lost even more connections to his old life. 

“Do you think these people are going to have a problem with me?” Stiles asked. 

“They'll like you Stiles,” Derek said, knowing that Stiles was freaking out about this. He didn't know what exactly the boy was thinking, but the anxiety seemed to come off of him in waves and Derek could practically hear his mind thinking at one hundred miles an hour. 

“What if they don't though Derek?” Stiles asked, starting to fidget more than he already had been. “What if when we get there I do something to piss off one of the alphas? What if I do something to disrespect them? I wouldn't know if I had, but what if I do? What if they just don't like me? What if they think I'm annoying because I talk too much and use too much sarcasm? What if they just don't like humans and think that I'm tricking you into thinking that you like me when I'm actually a hunter and my goal is to kill you and the whole pack that you take me to?”

Stiles was in full panic mode now, and was speaking too many words in barely any time. He was speaking faster than Derek had ever heard him speak, and he wasn't breathing enough. In Derek's opinion, Stiles was over thinking all of this, but the boy definitely wasn't going to listen to Derek at the moment. As it was Derek didn't have any time to answer Stiles’s question before the boy was asking another one. 

They had been driving down an empty road for about half an hour since they were getting closer to the rural part of town where the pack lived. The smaller amount of people they saw on the roads, the more Stiles had started to panic. As Derek pulled the jeep over to the side of the road he couldn't help but be thankful that not many people were traveling down this road. 

Derek put the car in park, took off his seatbelt, and turned toward Stiles. The boy was just sitting there, rambling more questions as they came to mind, and Derek wasn't sure if he knew that the car was parked. Derek unbuckled Stiles’s seatbelt and grabbed one of his hands. 

“Hey, slow down,” Derek said, gently rubbing his thumb over the top of Stiles’s hand. 

Stiles turned to face Derek, eyebrows scrunching together. “Why did we stop?” He asked. 

Derek huffed out a bit of laughter. “Because you obviously needed a moment to calm down. This pack doesn't hate humans, and won't think that you are going to kill them. This pack also does not care about etiquette okay? All you have to do is respect them the same way you do when you go over to a friend’s house okay? The pack should be pretty relaxed since we aren't coming for any kind of pack business.”

Stiles nodded, gulping a little. “What kind of business could we come here for?”

“If there was some dispute about territory or if one of the pack’s wolves had ended up in someone else’s territory by accident.”

“Why the second one?”

“Because it could be seen as a sort of attack. If you were planning to attack an alpha, you would want to send out scouts to check out the alpha you were going to attack. You would want them to find the state of the alpha and the territory, and you would want to know the state of the pack itself. If there are a lot of older wolves, children, or humans then the pack would be considered weak. If they have a lot of strong wolves it might make the attacking alpha think twice about carrying out their plan.”

Stiles nodded. “You wolves really are bound to instinct aren't you?” He asked with a laugh. 

“I guess you could say that.”

A few minutes later, when Stiles had stopped panicking so bad and the two were just talking, Stiles realized Derek still hadn't let go of his hand. The older man’s thumb was still rubbing against the top of his hand, sometimes light as a feather and almost tickling and sometimes a little rougher, the callouses on Derek's thumb rubbing against Stiles’s fair skin. Either way Stiles enjoyed the intimacy of the gesture. 

“Are you okay now?” Derek asked, starting to pull away. 

Stiles didn't want to let go of Derek, but let the werewolf pull away completely and pull the car back onto the road. He took Derek's hand again as soon as they were back on their way. 

...

When Stiles and Derek showed up at their destination, they were welcomed with open arms. The alphas, and the rest of the pack, were excited to see Derek again after all the time that had passed, and welcomed Stiles like they had known him just as long as they had known Derek. It wasn't awkward, and Stiles didn't feel like he was going to offend anyone by accident. Just like Derek had said, the pack had acted really relaxed through all of the introductions. 

The pack was fairly large. Of course since Stiles had never been around a real pack, it was easy to find one that was bigger than what he was used to. This pack had two alphas, who were mated, and their kids, and their kid's kids, and aunts and uncles and cousins. By the end of the introductions, Stiles knew that there was no way he was going to be able to remember everyone's names. He would try, but there were just too many to remember. 

The alpha's name was Cedric Thomas and was an older man with graying brown hair and shining blue eyes. He was as tall as Derek and carried himself confidently, the way an alpha should. He seemed to radiate respect. When he walked by the wolves of his pack they all have him a respectful distance and didn't try to command his attention. Just from a few minutes in his presence, Stiles could tell that he was a good alpha. 

The alpha's mate was named Luna, and Stiles thought it was kind of funny considering that she was a werewolf. He didn't know if she had been born or changed, but it didn't matter, she was a werewolf now. She had the same respect that he mate had, but she seemed softer, like she could be counted on to cheer you up if you were having a bad day. There were smile lines around her eyes gray eyes and just her presence made Stiles want to smile. Her name might have meant moon, but she seemed more like the sun. 

“We can show you where the two of you will be staying,” Cedric asked, dismissing the rest of the pack and motioning for Derek and Stiles to follow him.  

“The pack has gotten a lot bigger since the last time I was here,” Derek said as Cedric and Luna led them to where they would be staying. 

Cedric smiled. “It has been a while since you have been here Derek. Our children are a little older than you and have had children and our siblings have had children so the pack has been thriving.”

“And you have not suffered any attacks?”

“No, there are still bigger packs than ours for others to attack.” Cedric paused, seeming to think about what he was going to say next. “I know your loss happened many years ago, but it is still a great loss. The Hale pack was a strong and loyal ally of the Thomas pack and had been for years. Just know, if you ever need anything, we are here for you.”

Derek nodded his thanks, and he looked very thankful for what Cedric said, but Stiles had seen his mental walls go back up. Cedric might have been being polite, and it had been a good thing to say, but it had already turned Derek back in toward himself.

The group of four walked on for a few minutes before Cedric cleared his throat. “What was the reason the two of you needed a place to stay Derek?” 

“Stiles is from Beacon Hills and is an unclaimed mate. He was being attacked and kidnapped because of this and we suspect something else. He left home a little while ago and we happened to meet and really we just needed a safe place to stay.”

Cedric nodded. “Then this will be your place of residence for as long as the two of you need it.”

The four of them had come up on a small building that Stiles had not realized was even there. The place was covered in plants and practically looked like a plant itself. Vines were growing up the sides of every wall ad wrapped around the door and the windows. It was a low lying place, and looked just big enough for two, maybe three, people to spend time in. It was set back in the woods, maybe a quarter of a mile away from the main house, and was obviously used by visitors. 

Derek and Stiles walked right in, and Cedric and Luna stayed at the door. The older couple watched Stiles and Derek for a moment before saying their goodbyes. 

“We will have a pack member bring out some food for the two of you,” Cedric said, just before he and his mate walked away, satisfied smiles on their faces. 

Derek and Stiles took a few minutes to look around the small place. Most of it was out in the open, a small kitchen with all the necessary appliances and a small, round table with two chairs. A small living room was attached to the kitchen and it was equipped with a small, flat screen television and a couch big enough for two people to sit comfortably on. There were two doors connected to the living room: one that led to a small bathroom and one that led to a bedroom. Inside the bedroom was one large sized bed covered with maroon sheets and a maroon comforter. The pillows that were placed neatly at the head of the bed were covered in golden pillowcases. 

“Um, hey Derek?” Stiles called out, after being the first of the two of them to look into the bedroom. 

“Yeah?” Derek said, coming up behind the boy. 

“Did you happen to notice that there is only one bed?”

“Not until you said something about it.” Derek studied Stiles’s face, trying to read an emotion there or get something from his scent. Neither showed that he was stressing out too bad. “Do you want me to sleep on the couch?”

“No, I have no problem sleeping in the same bed as you.”  
  
“Okay.”

“Okay.”

...

 _It is no big deal sleeping in the same bed as Derek_ , Stiles thought, lying in the king sized bed later that night. Both of them were fully clothed, other than Derek wasn't wearing a shirt. Stiles had found it quite hard to keep his eyes, and his hands, off of Derek as the older man had been taking his clothes off, and after they had lain down in bed Stiles had still found it hard to keep his hands off of Derek. The bare skin, the muscles, and the triskelion tattoo on Derek's back, were just begging to be touched. 

“Is it weird sleeping in the same bed?” Stiles asked, thinking he was just talking to the room, but finding out quickly that Derek was still awake. 

“No Stiles. Maybe if we weren't dating it'd be weird, but it doesn't have to be weird if you don't make it weird,” Derek said, sounding as if his face was buried in the pillow. 

When Stiles looked over at Derek, he saw that the werewolf's face was buried in the pillow. He chuckled a bit. “So it isn't weird?” Stiles asked, thinking about the fact that there was at least a foot of room in between them and the fact that both of them had laid down like that, as if they didn't want to sleep any closer to each other than they absolutely had to. 

Derek moved over, getting closer to Stiles until he was pressed up against the younger boy from shoulder all the way down to their ankles. “Is this better?” Derek asked. 

Stiles turned so he was facing Derek and took the man’s hand and wrapped his arm around his waist. Stiles pulled the sheet and comforter up around the two of them. “This is even better,” he said. 

Within minutes, the two of them were fast asleep. 

…

The next day was pretty lazy for Stiles. Cedric had asked Derek to accompany him on a hunt, so Stiles was left alone with the rest of the pack. At first he hadn't been sure if he just wanted to stay in the guest house all day and avoid the rest of the pack, or if he wanted to actually interact with everyone else. In the end, he decided to interact since he would have nothing to do with Derek gone. 

When he walked into the big house, there were people everywhere. There were people in the living room watching television, there were people in the kitchen talking and making lunch, there were people upstairs, from what Stiles could hear, probably watching television, taking naps, or doing whatever else. There were also people just sitting on the staircase. There were about five of them and they were all doing different things. One of the girls was sitting there listening to music, one of the boys drawing in a sketchbook in his lap, one boy was playing a game on an iPod, one girl was talking on the phone, and the final girl was reading. Stiles briefly wondered why they all had chosen to sit on the stairs instead of in the kitchen, the living room, or their own rooms. 

Just as Stiles was about to turn back to walk into the kitchen, someone grabbed on to his arm. He whirled his hand around, a little more startled than he cared to admit, to see Luna standing there, a smile lighting up her face. Stiles couldn't help but smile back. 

"Come into the kitchen?" The alphas mate asked. 

Instead of waiting for an answer, Luna started walking toward the kitchen, gently pulling on Stiles’s arm. Since he had been planning on heading that way anyway, he didn't try to remove her hand. 

The kitchen that Luna led Stiles into was larger than it had looked when Stiles had briefly looked inside the doorway on his way past. It had looked like a normal sized kitchen that time, but walking in showed that it was about two times larger than the kitchen back home. There was a large, white refrigerator in the corner that was covered in school pictures, pictures that were hand drawn, and those little letter magnets that kids use to spell. Next to that was a white stove, which currently had pots on every burner and pans in the oven. There were sinks next to that, and then an extensive counter space covered with more cooking utensils. In the middle of the kitchen, separating the kitchen from the dining area, was more counter space. Nothing was on this space currently, but Stiles guessed that it would be covered with pots and pans of food as soon as everything was done. 

Every person in the kitchen was a person that Stiles had met, but other than Luna he didn't remember any of their names. Most of them were older members of the pack, teenagers up to adults, and then there were a few children, running between people's legs and playing with the refrigerator magnets. 

"What are you guys making?" Stiles asked, smelling all of the different smells in the kitchen. 

"Meatloaf, chicken, pork chops, salad, vegetables, and brownies," Luna said, smiling. 

"That's a lot of food."

"There are a lot of people."

Stiles stood and watched as Luna went back into the group, quickly picking up back where she must have left off. Everyone seemed to work effortlessly, and easily around each other. There were a few bump ins, or near ones, but nothing spilled. Stiles knew that if he was one of the people cooking, something would have spilled by now. 

"So why don't you tell us a bit about yourself Stiles?" Luna asked after a few minutes. 

Stiles scrunched his eyebrows together. "What do you want to know?"

"How did you meet Derek?" One of the teenage girls asked, adding a little sigh at the end. 

Stiles thought the behavior was a little stranger, but continued on. "Uh well, I had to leave home because I kept getting threatened."

"Because of your bond with Derek?" Luna asked. 

"Uh no, I didn't know Derek then." Stiles paused. "We're pretty sure it had to do with me being an unmated werewolf mate. I don't really know what that entails, but that's what Derek concluded after I told him what had happened."

"But you don't believe this?"

Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "I don't know. I don't know much about werewolves and their mates other than what I have managed to find in books and what Derek has told me. It seems possible, I just didn't think it was possible for me."

"Well why not?"

Stiles shrugged. "I wasn't born around werewolves, I didn't know about them until my best friend was bitten and then every supernatural creature decided to invade Beacon Hills. I always thought that I would find someone, but I didn't think it was going to be destined and everything else that goes along with being a werewolf's mate."

"And you don't know who your mate is?"

Stiles shook his head. 

Luna smiled the kind of smile that meant she knew something that everyone else didn't. Or at least she knew something Stiles didn't. He couldn't be sure, but when he looked around the room, and nearly no one would look back at him, he got the feeling that they were all in on the information that he wasn't in on. 

Before Stiles could say anything, one of the other pack members turned to the stove and started pulling everything out. Everyone helped to put things on the middle counter area, and everyone helped lay out everything on the table. Plates, forks, knives, and glasses were distributed and then everyone started to sit down. 

Stiles had thought that Luna would be the first one to sit down, or that the other pack members would prepare her food for her, but she was the second to last person to even start getting her food. While everyone was rushing around, she watched Stiles and noticed how he was waiting for everyone to get their food before getting his own. She noticed how he looked just a little confused, and could practically hear his mind working. 

Luna grabbed an extra plate and handed it to Stiles. Everyone was sitting around the table now, enjoying the meal. "Stiles," Luna said, getting his attention. "Maybe your mate is closer to you than he seems."

Without waiting for a reply, Luna went to sit at the head of the table, filled with her pack mates. 

What she said did nothing more to Stiles than to make him more confused than he already was. 

...

After a few hours of hunting and killing various woodland creatures, Derek and Cedric went back to where they had left their clothes. From there it was a half mile walk back to the house. The two of them could have easily ran there as humans, if they had left their clothes at the house or if they were willing to leave their clothes in the woods. Cedric knew that Derek would not ask questions if he decided to have the two of them walk that half mile in human form, just because Derek knew when to leave decisions alone. There was a purpose to Cedric's decision anyway. 

After the two of them had out their clothes back on and had started walking back to the house, Cedric cleared his throat. "There's an interesting bond between you and Stiles."

"What do you mean? We're just dating."

"Ah," Cedric said, nodding his head, letting Derek believe, even if it was just momentarily, that he believed him. "So there isn't anything else between the two of you?"

Derek looked over at the older man. "Like what?"

"Well, all of us have noticed the peculiar scent that Stiles possesses. Part of it is the scent of an unmated mate, part of it is the scent that people get when they are, and have been, near their mate, and part of it we do not know what it is. I do not expect you to know an explanation for the last part, but maybe you could enlighten me on the second part."

Derek walked along, thinking about what to say. He was thankful that Cedric did not seem to be pushing him, but he did notice that the older man started to slow down his pace the longer it took Derek to respond. 

"I think I need a moment to rest," Cedric said, sitting right down on the ground. The man certainly did not look like he needed to rest, he looked to Derek like he could run a marathon with no problem, but Derek knew that the man was really giving him time to come up with an answer. 

Derek slipped down to the ground. "I didn't realize it was him for a while."

"You did not realize that Stiles was your mate?" Cedric said, his tone almost disbelieving. 

"No. When I met Stiles I could smell the scent of my mate on him, but I didn't think it was him."

"Would you start from the beginning please Derek?"

Derek nodded, really not wanting to talk about this. "I'm sure my parents told you that from a young age we knew my mate was from Beacon Hills. After the fire, I had no intention of finding my mate. I let it go for a while until recently, when I was staying at my aunt and uncles house and could feel that my mate was close. Then when I met Stiles I could smell that he had been around werewolves, could smell that scent on him, but led myself to believe that it couldn't be him. Then we started dating, and I stopped thinking about it again. I always kind of thought that it was him, but I didn't realize it was until we were coming here."

"What happened?"

"He got stressed in the car and I could feel his stress. It wasn't like normal when I can smell it, I could feel it as if it was my own."

Cedric smiled, clapping Derek on the shoulder and standing up. "You have found the one thing that most people spend their entire lives looking for. Are you going to tell him or let him believe that you are going to leave him once you find your mate?"

"I intend on telling him."

"Good, because I do not know how long I can keep the rest of my pack from telling him."

...

Derek and Cedric arrived back at the house just in time to get food before everything was put away into different Tupperware containers. Stiles made Derek a plate, and Luna made Cedric a plate. Stiles didn't notice, but when he finished making Derek's plate and had given it to the werewolf, Luna and Cedric were smiling at each other like everything in the world was finally right. 

"How was your hunt?" Stiles asked Derek, sitting down at the table across from his boyfriend. 

"It went well," Derek replied, mouth full. 

Stiles let out a laugh. "I know you weren't raised in a cave Derek," he said with a smile on his face, "I'm sure your mom taught you that you don't talk with your mouth full."

Derek chuckled and wiped his mouth. "Sorry." He looked over at Cedric and Luna who were both standing at the counter. Cedric had his plate in one hand and a fork in the other, but he wasn't sitting at the table like Derek was. When Derek caught the older man’s attention, Cedric made a bit of a questioning look, and Derek just barely nodded as a response. 

"Luna, dear, why don't we go to the library?"

Luna laughed a little and followed her mate. 

The two left in the kitchen sat there for a moment in silence, Derek eating his food and Stiles just thinking. Of course Derek was thinking also, his mind was going so fast he thought his brain might leap right out of his skull. He was thinking that this place may not be the best place to tell Stiles, and that everyone in the house would be able to hear every word he said. He thought that maybe Stiles would want him to tell him this somewhere else, somewhere where it was just the two of them, or maybe Stiles wouldn't even believe him. He thought maybe he should wait just a little longer. 

"Stiles," Derek said, deciding to forget his worries for Stiles’s sake, "I need to tell you something."

The moment that Derek saw Stiles’s face fall was the moment he knew he had done that wrong. His voice had sounded worried, even though he had barely put any variation into the words. 

"Is this the breakup talk? Did you find your mate and now you want to break up with me because he or she is perfect and I'm-"

Derek didn't let Stiles finish, instead he reached right across the table and put his hand over Stiles’s mouth. "I did find my mate, and he is perfect. He talks too much, but that works out because I talk too little. He's a little sporadic and talks before he thinks, but all of that's okay, it's more than okay actually."

Stiles tilted his head. All of the things Derek had just said sounded a lot like how most people described Stiles, but he didn't want to get his hopes up. He wanted Derek to have to say it. 

"You're my mate Stiles."


	11. Chapter 11

“So you’re telling me, that you’re the reason that I had to leave my dad and all of my friends to deal with the omega pack, and maybe even the alpha pack?” Stiles said, rage evident in his voice.

Derek looked at him in confusion. “Stiles-”

“No, if I’m your mate, and all these alphas could smell me because I was unmated, then this is your fault.”

Before Derek could say anything, or fully process what had just happened, Stiles was marching out of the house. He walked right to the guest house, not stopping once, even when members of the ally pack would stop and say something to him. Part of him knew that this was the wrong reaction, that he should have been happy to finally know who his mate was, and to know that he wasn’t going to lose Derek when Derek’s mate finally made another appearance in his life. Part of Stiles knew that he shouldn’t be angry about this and that Derek wasn’t the reason that the alpha pack had decided to take an unnecessary interest in him, but all of him didn’t care.

Stiles didn’t want to think about the fact that Derek had known he was his mate while they were in Beacon Hills and had never done anything about it. He didn’t want to think about the fact that Derek had been able to feel him grieve for his mother, and have panic attacks, but he had never done anything about it. Stiles didn’t know how the whole mate bond worked, especially when the pair was unmated, but he figured that Derek could have at least found him and become friends with Stiles. The werewolf would have been able to find the boy by his scent, would have at least been able to be there for Stiles when he needed someone, but he hadn’t even tried. Stiles didn’t want to think about the length of time that he could have known Derek, but didn’t get the chance to.

When Stiles got in the guest house, he thought about sitting on the bed for a few seconds, and then threw that idea out the window when he realized that that was where Derek slept too. He ended up sitting at the table in the kitchen, pouring over the books he had bought from the bookstore so long ago.

Since he had met Derek, and especially since he had found out that Derek was a werewolf, he hadn’t felt the need to do more research about his condition. Derek had told Stiles everything he knew about werewolf mates, and even though what Derek said didn’t answer all of Stiles’s questions; he had been okay with letting it go. At least he knew a bit more about what werewolves were coming after him for. With Derek for answers, Stiles hadn’t thought that he would need to look anything up, because even if Derek didn’t know an answer, Derek had connections that might know.

Stiles hadn’t thought of the fact that he might get angry with Derek and need something to do.

Reading over the mythology books, especially the ones that Stiles hadn’t had a chance to look at before, was extremely beneficial. Not so much in the knowledge department, but definitely in the distractions department. Without even realizing it, Stiles had been pouring over books for a good five hours. Even then, the only reason he stopped was his stomach started growling.

Stiles set a piece of paper in the book to hold his place and stood up from the table. When he had come in, the sun had been up high in the sky, brightening everything it touched. Now it was lower, and the sky was starting to get darker, all of the trees and the other objects had shadows hunching over beside them.

As much as Stiles didn’t want to face Derek, he definitely wanted food. He was about to open the door, when someone knocked from the other side.

Stiles opened the door to see Derek standing there, looking a little sheepish like he wasn’t sure what he was allowed to do, and holding two plates of food. Each plate had a chicken breast, a pile of mashed potatoes, and a small mound of corn. Derek held one out to Stiles and stayed standing by the door.

“Could I come in?” he asked, keeping a blank face in place as he did so.

Stiles shrugged, already shoveling food into his mouth.

Derek followed the boy into the house and followed him to the table. The two of them sat down after Stiles carefully removed all of the books from the table and put them in a neat pile.

Stiles was content with not saying anything about what had happened, and Derek was too if Stiles didn’t want to talk about it. Of course the older man wanted to know what had happened, and what he had done wrong, but he didn’t want to push Stiles and risk making him angry all over again.

“So, uh, what were you looking for?” Derek asked after a few tense minutes of eating in silence.

“More about this whole mate thing. I don’t know much.”

“You could have just asked me or maybe Cedric and Luna.”

“I was mad and didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Fair enough.”

Another few minutes passed, and both of them finished their meal. Neither of them stood from the table, both of them waiting for the other to say something, or to think of something to say themselves. Stiles wasn’t ready to apologize, even though he knew he should and he knew that he shouldn’t have reacted the way he did in the first place, but he had too much pride to apologize only a few hours after he had gotten angry. Derek though, just didn’t want to piss Stiles off more. He didn’t quite understand what was so wrong with what he had told Stiles, although he did see how Stiles had jumped to the conclusion that he had. Derek just wanted everything to be okay again so he didn’t feel like he was going to wolf out every few minutes.

Stiles sighed, grabbing his and Derek’s plates and utensils from the table and carrying them over to the sink. He figured they could take the dishes back to the house in the morning. “Why don’t we just forget about what happened earlier, and talk about it tomorrow,” Stiles said, leaning against the sink so he was looking at Derek, who hadn’t yet moved away from the table. “I really don’t feel like talking tonight.”

Derek nodded, still keeping his mouth shut.

The two of them worked on shutting down the house; turning the lights off and making sure the door and all of the windows were locked, and then went into the bedroom. Neither of them spoke as they stripped down to their boxers and climbed into bed. Still neither of them said anything as they got comfortable, fitting their bodies into comfortable positions and making sure that they weren’t encroaching on the other person’s space.

Neither of them said a word as Stiles took Derek’s arm and wrapped it around his waist. The two were facing each other, looking into each other’s faces, but didn’t say anything.

…

When Stiles woke up the next morning, it took him a few minutes to remember why he had been so mad the day before. He woke up with Derek beside him, the older man still asleep and his arm still wrapped around Stiles’s waist. Looking at Derek made Stiles smile; the werewolf looked so content and peaceful when he slept. It made Stiles feel happy, but then he remembered why he had been mad the day before.

Stiles got out of their bed, carefully removing Derek’s arm so as not to wake him, put on some clothes, grabbed his and Derek’s dirty dishes from the night before, and walked to Cedric and Luna’s house. Stiles wasn’t sure how many people would be awake then since it was still early, but he figured at least he could get some coffee.

 When Stiles walked into the kitchen, he wasn’t surprised to see Luna sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee. Stiles had been able to smell the coffee the moment he had walked into the house, the tantalizing aroma already working to wake him up before he had even drank any.

“Good morning Stiles,” Luna said, smiling. “Go ahead and grab a cup of coffee after you put those in the sink.”

Stiles nodded his thanks and moved around the kitchen; taking care of the dirty dishes and getting a cup of coffee. The coffee smelled even better the closer that he got to it.

“Did you sleep well?” Luna asked.

Sties nodded, bringing the coffee up to his face, breathing in the smell of it, and then carefully taking a sip of the burning liquid.

“How are you and Derek? Did you talk last night?”

Stiles slowly walked over to the table, taking as much time as he possibly could to sit down and get comfortable so that he could put off answering the question. “Uh, no, we didn’t really talk last night.”

“And why not?”

“I didn’t want to.”

Luna nodded. “Derek does deserve to know why you were so mad Stiles,” the woman said, unwrapping one of her hands from her own coffee mug and wrapping it around Stiles’s hands, which were still wrapped around his own mug.

“That’s the thing Luna, I’m not mad, and I wasn’t really mad at him yesterday. I was just frustrated and stressed. I haven’t talked to or seen my dad or my friends in weeks and I don’t know if they’re still alive or not. I’ve been threatened by alphas and omegas. And I’ve been worried that during this trip Derek was going to find his mate and I was going to become the third wheel, or he was going to leave and I would have to figure all of this out by myself. I was just letting out my frustrations and yeah I know it was in the worst way that I did it, and I regret it, but-”

When Stiles stopped, Luna smiled at him and gripped his hand a bit tighter. “I know this whole experience has been tough for you Stiles, and I understand that you’ve been frustrated,”

“And you’re going to tell me I should talk to Derek about this and apologize for my reaction,” Stiles said, interrupting Luna before he had to hear her say what he knew he had to do.

Luna just nodded.

“I’m going to grab him a cup of coffee, is that alright?”

“Take what you need Stiles.”

After refilling his own mug, Stiles grabbed another mug from the cupboard and filled it with coffee.

Stiles walked back to the guest house getting ready to apologize to Derek and to explain what had been going through his head when he had started yelling at Derek for telling him he was his mate. He was ready to let his pride go and to apologize because he was the one in the wrong, Derek hadn’t done anything to deserve to get yelled at.

When Stiles got into the house Derek was pacing, walking back and forth wearing just a pair of black boxers. Stiles had honestly thought that he would still be asleep, but obviously he had been wrong. He didn’t know what was going through Derek’s mind as he was pacing, but the look on Derek’s face looked mildly stressed.

“What are you doing?” Stiles asked, making Derek stop in his tracks.

Derek didn’t answer; he just walked up to Stiles and took the mugs out of the boy’s hands, putting them down on the table. The werewolf then turned back to Stiles, walking up to the boy until their faces were a mere inch apart, and cupped Stiles’s face in his hands. He pulled the boy’s face about half an inch, and met Stiles’s lips with his own. At first the kiss was just a slow moving of their lips against each other’s. The two seemed to be taking their time, Stiles letting out all of his apology into the kiss, and Derek taking the apology and telling Stiles it was okay, it didn’t matter. Quickly after though, the kiss turned heated, Derek slipping his tongue into Stiles’s mouth and Stiles meeting the werewolf’s tongue with his own.

Stiles was the one to pull away, not wanting to go too far. He had a smile on his face as he looked at Derek. “That was nice,” he said, wrapping his arms around Derek’s waist.

Derek still had Stiles’s face cupped in his hands. “It was nice,” he agreed.

“What was it for?”

“To tell you that I was sorry for springing the mate news on you how I did.”

Stiles shook his head, smile falling and being replaced with a serious look. “You have nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, especially since I am really happy that I’m your mate.”

Instead of saying anything, Derek pulled Stiles’s face back to his and kissed the boy.

…

When Luna came and told Derek and Stiles that the pack was having a sort of ‘pack night’ that night, and invited the two of them to join them, Stiles was worried that it was going to be awkward. He was worried that because of his actions the day before, everyone was going to be nervous around him, just waiting for him to blow up about some other simple little thing. He and Derek were fine, and had been cuddling for most of the day, but he was worried about the rest of the pack. Between nuzzling his face into Stiles’s neck, Derek tried to convince Stiles that everything was going to be fine, that no one was going to even mention what had happened the day before. Stiles said it wasn’t the mentioning that he was worried about, he really didn’t care if someone brought it up because then he could tell everyone what had happened and be done with it. No, he was worried that no one was going to mention it, and everyone was going to talk about it behind his back.

“Stiles,” Derek said, putting his hand on the small of Stiles’s back as the two of them walked from the guest house to the main house, “Everything is going to be fine. You know everyone likes you, and everyone knows what you have been going through. They aren’t going to judge you on one little thing that you have done.”

Stiles nodded, but didn’t say anything.

When the two of them walked into the house, they immediately went to the living room because that was where all of the noise was coming from. Every member was in the living room when Derek and Stiles walked in. Everyone was either sitting in a chair or on one of the couches, or they were sitting on the floor. Some of the teenagers were sitting on the floor, keeping their legs stretched out like a barricade for the babies that were crawling around in between them. The babies laughed every time they encountered someone’s leg like they had finally managed to be fooled. The adults, most of who were sitting in chairs or on the couches, were talking and laughing in between themselves, but they were watching the babies at the same time.

Stiles didn’t have any experience with werebabies but he guessed that they were as much of a handful as regular babies were.

“I’m glad the two of you could make it,” Luna said, smiling in Stiles’s and Derek’s direction. “Please, take a seat.”

Stiles looked around the room, thinking that he would probably just sit on the ground, especially when he saw that there was only one chair that wasn’t currently being used. Before he got the chance to plop down on the ground right where he stood, Derek grabbed onto his hand and dragged him over to the chair. Derek sat down first and then pulled Stiles until the boy was sitting comfortably in his lap.

Luna, and many of the other pack members, smiled in their direction.

“Everything is okay again?” Cedric asked, nodding toward Derek and Stiles.

Stiles looked back at Derek, a bit of a blush creeping onto his cheeks. “Yeah, everything is okay.”

“Good.”

Without another word, Cedric seemed to close the discussion. For the rest of the night, even though Derek and Stiles talked with pretty much everyone in the room, no one mentioned what had happened. Stiles knew that everyone had heard it, that was one of the downsides of verbally fighting while you were in a house full of werewolves, but no one asked about it. They didn’t ask how the two had overcome it, what they had talked about, or why Stiles had done it in the first place. Stiles was thankful about that.

After a while, the teenagers all left, passing the baby werewolves back to their parents or to any other member of the pack that was willing to take them. Stiles held one of them for a while, but when the little boy had started squirming around, he had passed the baby on to someone else.

After it had been a few hours, and Stiles, Derek and the pack had been talking for a while, Stiles just happened to look over to where the large bookcases were. At first, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary: old books, knick knacks, and dust covered the shelves. At first that was all that Stiles noticed, then with one more, quick glance over in the same direction, Stiles noticed that the same werebaby that he had been holding just a little while before was on top of one of the bookcases. The baby was giggling and sitting like that was where he belonged, but that was definitely not where he should have been. A baby with little balance was not supposed to be on top of a bookshelf.

Stiles stood up from Derek’s lap quickly, alerting everyone else in the room. Everyone looked in the same direction that Stiles was looking, and as each person noticed the baby, they all let out gasps of surprise.

Everyone moved closer to the bookshelf, each of them thinking of a way to get the baby down from there without getting him hurt.

“How do we get him down from there?” Stiles asked, hoping that someone had an answer.

After about a minute, no one had answered.

“Alright, thanks for the answer guys.”

Everyone in the room watched, and noticed that at least the baby seemed to want to stay in the middle and not wander near the edge. As long as he stayed sitting in the middle, he wouldn’t fall. As long as he stayed in the middle, everyone else had time to think of a way to get him down.

Unfortunately, right after the thought passed through Stiles’s mind, the baby started crawling toward the edge. The baby watched the pack members who were watching him, wide smile lighting up his face. He was giggling as he watched the faces of his family members turn from mild concern to flat out anxiety. The child kept crawling though, as if he was trying to crawl right into someone’s arms.

Within seconds he was right at the edge, one hand passing over the edge and a look of surprise coming over the child’s face. Looks of horror flashed onto the faces of everyone else as the baby still continued to crawl, first his other hand going over the edge, and then the rest of his small body tumbling after.

The adults in the room jumped forward, but everyone was too far away as the baby fell. No one was close enough to catch him before he fell to the ground.

Even though he knew it wouldn’t help, Stiles yelled “Stop!” in the direction of the baby, just waiting for him to hit the floor. But against everything he thought, the baby stopped in midair, about two feet from the ground. The child started laughing, and everyone else let out a sigh of relief. The baby’s mom rushed forward, grabbing her son out of the air and cradling him to her chest.

“How did you do that?” Derek asked, seeming to be the only one solely focused on Stiles.

Stiles shook his head, the rest of his body shaking too from pure shock. “I don’t know.”

Derek walked over to where Stiles had moved, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling the boy lose. “It’s okay Stiles, you’re the hero tonight.”

“That is the truth Derek,” Cedric said, turning from his daughter, who was still holding her son close, to Stiles. “You are the hero and we have to thank you for it. He could be very hurt if it wasn’t for you.”

Luna turned to Stiles then, putting a hand on her mate’s arm. “And you seem to have a special ability.”

Stiles shrugged.

“You don’t know what you did just now, do you?” She asked, a small smile spreading across her face. She turned to her mate, sharing a look of understanding, and then turned back to Stiles. “We know a group of witches that will be able to help you learn about the ability that you just showed us that you have. Why don’t the two of you go get some sleep, and Cedric and I will tell you of these people in the morning?”

There was no way that Stiles could say no when Luna was looking at him the way that she was, so he nodded his head, pulling Derek behind him as the two of them exited the house and made their way back to the guest house.


	12. Chapter 12

The next morning, Stiles and Derek woke up early so that they could go and talk to Cedric and Luna right away. They didn’t know what the couple was going to tell them exactly, or if they would be able to tell them anything, so Stiles and Derek tried to be prepared for everything. The two of them got around completely, looking ready to take on the day, and they also packed up all of their belongings just in case they didn’t end up staying after their talk with Cedric and Luna.

Derek and Stiles walked into the main house, being greeted by the alpha and his mate as soon as they entered the door. Cedric and Luna were seated at the kitchen table, holding cups of coffee. In front of the two remaining chairs, there were coffee cups filled with the hot liquid for Derek and Stiles.

“We have quite a bit to talk about,” Cedric said, watching as his two guests took their seats at the table and took drinks out of their coffee cups. “We should probably start with what happened yesterday.”

Stiles blushed a little, looking straight down into his cup. “I don’t know how I did that, honest.”

“I believe you Stiles, I really do. I still would like to discuss what happened, what you did to cause it, and what will happen because of it.”

“That sounds a little final, like after we discuss this you plan on killing me, or feeding me to some monster that you have at your control.”

The three other people let out small laughs before letting the conversation continue once again.

“What did you do Stiles?” Luna asked finally.

Stiles shrugged. “I panicked. When I saw the baby falling I shouted stop, even though I knew it wasn’t going to help, and then the baby stopped in mid-air.”

“But you believed that the baby needed to stop didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Cedric and Luna shared a look. It alarmed Stiles, even though they didn’t seem alarmed. He knew they knew something, but didn’t know if they were going to tell him. The look that passed between the alpha and his mate clearly said that they had heard, or maybe seen, something like this before and knew exactly what to do for Stiles. What alarmed Stiles was the fact that they could withhold the knowledge that he desperately needed.

“Are you going to say anything?” Stiles asked, thinking that it looked like the two of them were having an entire conversation right there without having to say a single word.

The two broke their gazes apart, and looked over at Stiles. Stiles was slightly worried that the two were going to be annoyed with him for interrupting their conversation.

“There’s a group of witches a few towns over from here, that will be able to help you with your ability. Years ago, there was another who was somewhat like you, and they helped him greatly. They were able to teach him how to control his newfound powers, and they were able to explain to him how he had been able to get them.” Cedric paused, looking Stiles over. “Maybe they will be able to do the same for you, and maybe you will find something out about yourself and others around you, that you did not know before.”

If Stiles had thought that Cedric telling him what they needed to discuss had sounded final, he had no way of describing what those last words sounded like.

…

After the rest of the pack had awoken, and Derek and Stiles were able to go around and say their goodbyes, the two of them were getting back into the jeep and driving away from more friends. Derek was driving again, Stiles was noticing that the werewolf almost always insisted on doing so, so Stiles had a chance to think. He didn’t let himself think about the friends he had left in Beacon Hills for long, but memories of them had crossed his mind as he and Derek left the Thomas house behind. Instead, he tried to think about, and predict, what kind of people he and Derek were going to encounter when they found this group of witches. Were they going to be okay with the two of them just showing up, unannounced? Would they be willing to help Stiles, would they even be able to? Cedric and Luna claimed that these people had helped someone like him before, and Stiles definitely believed the two, but that didn’t stop the thought from crossing his mind.

About ten miles away from the Thomas house, Stiles was pulled out of his thoughts when Derek grabbed his hand and started rubbing his thumb over the back of it.

“What are you thinking about?” Derek asked, looking over at Stiles for a second before looking back at the road.

“What’s going to happen when we get to this place.”

“It’s going to be fine.”

Stiles glared slightly over at Derek, studying the side of the older man’s face. “Why are you always so positive about these things?”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time I have some kind of worry, you insist that everything is going to work out just fine. I’m not a werewolf, so I can’t tell if you really believe that and are telling me the truth, or if you’re just trying to get me to calm down. Personally, I hope it’s the first one because I would rather you didn’t lie to me, even if it is to spare my feelings. That is a great lesson you should learn now since we will be together for a long time; even if you know I am not going to want to know, do not lie to me about it and do not avoid telling me. Tell me right away, got it Derek?” Stiles finished, pointing a finger at Derek, using the one that Derek didn’t currently have in his own hand.

“So you want me to tell you that everything you fear is going to happen and there is nothing you can do about it?”

“That’s exactly what I want you to tell me.”

Derek laughed a little and brought Stiles’s hand up to his face. Stiles had no idea what Derek was going to do, just watched the werewolf in silent fascination, until Derek was pressing a quick kiss to the back of Stiles’s hand.

After Derek let go of Stiles’s hand, Stiles may have stared at it for a while after the two had fallen silent.

…

When Derek and Stiles arrived at the house that Cedric and Luna had told them to go to, Stiles couldn't help but think that it was different than he had been expecting. He hadn't been expecting somewhere creepy with lots of dark trees, and shadows being thrown everywhere, but he hadn't been expecting what he saw either. Standing in front of Derek, Stiles, and Stiles’s jeep, was a modest house that looked like it was probably meant for four people. It was a two story, white house with a black roof. There was a two car garage attached, using the same color combination. Surrounding the house was a large yard with numerous plants and trees interspersed across the property, and an old, rusty swing set in the back yard. 

Stiles looked over at Derek, silently asking the man what he thought they should do. Derek shrugged, looked toward the house, and nodded at it. The two of them walked up to the front door and rang the bell. 

Something else that Stiles hadn't been expecting was four people to suddenly burst out of the door, and for him and Derek to end up ten feet away from the door, lying on their backs. As the people came closer to the two of them, all four of them holding out their hands like they were trying to make sure Derek and Stiles weren't going to get up and try to make a run for it, the harder it became for Stiles to breathe. He felt like he was slowly being suffocated, the air slowly being pulled out of his lungs, until the four people were standing around Derek and Stiles’s head's and the two of them were gasping, flopping around on the ground as they grabbed at their throats, trying to pry off the hands that weren't even there. 

"What do the two of you want?" The older male asked, identifying himself as the leader of the household. 

"We come from the Thomas pack," Derek choked out in answer. 

Immediately the four people surrounding then moved their arms from in front of them, to their sides. Immediately, Derek and Stiles could breathe again. 

The two children helped Derek and Stiles to their feet as the two adults watched them in silent consideration. 

"We are sorry we attacked like that," the man said, "We did not recognize you and therefore did not realize that the two of you were friends of our allies."

"I'm Derek Hale, and this is my mate Stiles Stilinski," Derek said, holding his hand out for each of the people to shake in turn.

Stiles did the same, just without the words since he had already been introduced. 

The man then ushered Derek and Stiles inside, his family following behind them. They kept walking until they were seated at an elegant, wooden table that held much more than four. Stiles then got a chance to get a better look at the four people who had tried to suffocate him and Derek. 

The patriarch of the family was tall, burly, and wearing a scowl. Stiles didn't think that he was an unhappy man though, because there were smile lines at the corners of his mouth and around his green eyes. The man’s dark hair curled slightly at the bottom, giving the impression that it would have a more dramatic wave if he were to let it grow out a hit longer. Stiles didn't think he was the kind of guy to wear his hair that way though. 

The matriarch of the family was only a few inches shorter than her husband, and shared identical laugh lines with him. Even though his expression was cautious, it didn't look closed. She seemed like the type of woman that would tell you anything if you took earned her trust. She had strawberry blonde hair that was completely straight, without a single wave to it, and bright green eyes. 

The young girl, who looked to be a bit older than her brother, shared the same green eyes as both her parents, had her father’s dark hair, and had lighter skin than her fathers, but darker skin than her mothers. She looked to be about thirteen or fourteen, and stood a bit protectively in front of her brother. 

The youngest of the family of four, the young boy, was the shortest an most different looking of the group. He still shared features with his parents and sister, but they were less startling and in your face. He had a light brown color hair that neither of his parents had, but the same green eyes. 

Each of them seemed to give off a type of energy that told Derek and Stiles that there was something different about them. Anyone else might write it off as a feeling they got around strangers, but Derek and Stiles knew that the energy pouring off of these four came from the magic held within them. 

"Would the two of you like anything to drink?" The woman asked. 

"What do you have?" Stiles asked, not wanting to ask for something that they didn't have. 

The woman grabbed a glass out of the cupboard for Stiles and sat it in front of him. "Whatever you want, just believe it's in there."

Stiles looked up at her, doubt written across his face. "How is that supposed to work?"

"The same way it has worked every other time you have done the same thing."

At the woman's words, Stiles’s mind flashed back to the two times he had done this. The latest, when he had willed the baby to stop falling, the time before that when he believed that the mountain ash around Carla's house would turn green and blend in with the grass it was lying on, and the time before at the rave in Beacon Hills when he had believed the handful of mountain ash would stretch over dozens of feet to meet with the beginning of the line. He realized though, that in two out of three of the instances there had been a common factor. In both instances where he had "believed" something would work and it did, he had been using mountain ash. The realization brought doubt with it, telling him that maybe the only thing he could really, without a doubt, do was command mountain ash. With the empty cup sitting in front of him, and no mountain ash in sight, Stiles couldn't help but think that this wasn't going to work. And he knew that if he listened to that nagging doubt, it wasn't going to anyway. 

Everyone around the table was staring at him expectantly, all of them already having full cups in front of them so they could drink as they pleased, so Stiles forced that nagging voice to shut up, and he believed that the empty glass in front of him would be full to the top with lemonade. When he opened his eyes, that he didn't remember closing in his concentration, he looked down at the cup to see the yellow liquid in his glass, topped off with a slice of lemon hanging off the edge. 

Stiles looked up at the woman. "How did you know that was what we were here for?"

"There have been only a few times that the Thomas pack have sent people onto seeing us, and every time they have been like you. They are able to make things happen just by believing that they can happen. You have a spark Stiles and you have been sent to us so you can learn how to use it."

"That sounds awfully familiar," Stiles said, thinking about someone back in Beacon Hills who often talked in riddles, and never gave them exactly the answer they were looking for. 

All of a sudden, someone new walked into the room. Until that moment, Stiles had had no idea that there was anyone else in the house besides the six people currently sitting around the table. He was proved wrong when a bald, black man walked into the room, holding a jar of black powder that could only have been mountain ash. The man had a smirk on his face, like he knew that Stiles was going to be surprised that he was there, and like he still knew something that no one else in the room knew. Stiles wondered if that was just a default expression for the man, since he had never been around him when he didn't look smug. 

"Deaton, what are you doing here?" Stiles asked, getting over his surprise. 

"I'm here to help you of course."

"How?"

"I told you a while ago, back in Beacon Hills, that you had a spark, just like Evelyn just told you. Back in Beacon Hills, it wasn't safe for me to tell you anything more, but here is safer."

"But not completely safe."

Deaton smiled. "No Stiles, nowhere is completely safe. People want you, they can sense what you are, and that makes you useful to them. And the fact that you are an unmated potential mate makes you even more appealing. They can steal an alphas mate right from under their noses, and they could force you to do their bidding. Once you are mated, you are stuck to that person, and to their pack. You would be a wonderful asset when it came to territory battles."

"So what you're telling me is, the entire thing back home with the alphas and the omegas was just one big pissing match?"

Deaton seemed to consider that, the room going completely silent as they waited for the man’s answer. "Essentially, yes."

Stiles looked over at Derek, mainly to see what this news was doing to the man. It was known to Stiles by now that Derek wasn't going to show much of anything, but Stiles hoped that he would be able to read something. He wanted some kind of expression that told him what to say since at the moment his stomach was all over the place. Part of him said to get angry again, but another part of him told him not to. He didn't want a repeat of what happened with Derek, he just didn't want to be mad at Derek, but part of him still thought this was all his fault. _If only Derek had found me earlier, or I just hadn't been his mate in the first place,_ Stiles thought before the larger part of him could censor it out. Of course that one statement made him feel horrible instantly. 

Stiles reached over the table and took Derek's hand in his. Derek squeezed his hand in a comforting gesture, telling him in a way that he was okay and that they would get through this. 

Deaton, the ever watchful veterinarian, caught the movement immediately. Of course it made sense, he thought, a small smile reaching across his face as he really looked up at the face that was connected to the body that the hand Stiles was holding was connected to. Everything dating pack to the thriving days of the Hale pack and little Derek waking his parents with nightmares that didn't seem to be his own all made sense. Everything with Talia came back, from her coming into the clinic minutes before it closed, carrying little Derek in her arms, and being trailed by her mate, to her and her mate begging Deaton to tell them what was happening with their son. Deaton had told them, of course, that it was his mate. Everything that his mate was feeling, Derek was feeling. When his mate had a bad dream, especially a really bad one, Derek would have the same, but he would know that it was not his own. What none of them had known, what Deaton couldn't have even guessed even when he saw Derek experiencing things that were not normal, was that Derek's mate wasn't just a human like everyone believed them to be. At such a young age, at the age everyone knew Derek's mate to be, nothing would show that would alert any of them that something was amiss. There was no way for any one of them to know that Derek's mate, one Stiles Stilinski, possessed the ability to use magic. With one comforting gesture between Stiles and Derek, everything that had been separate in Deaton's eyes before all became connected.

Deaton looked at Derek, focusing on the face that he hadn't seen in so long, the face that had become different in age but stayed the same in expression. Deaton focused on the face that he had sworn to protect, but had long since given up on that promise. "Well hello Mr. Hale," he said, smiling just a little as he thought about the small boy from all those years ago. 


	13. Chapter 13

“How do you know who I am?” Derek asked, his emotional walls coming up immediately in an attempt to protect himself.

Deaton smiled. “I have known you since before you were born Derek. I was very close with your mother and father before the fire.”

Deaton said the words so matter of fact, as if the fact that two people he had been very close with dying in a fire set by one of their enemies didn’t matter at all. It seemed as if he didn’t care, but it could have just been that he had gotten good at hiding his emotions toward the subject.

With one glance over at Derek, Stiles could tell that Derek had not yet mastered that skill.

“How were you close to them if I don’t remember you?” Derek asked, voice steady.

A small smile appeared on Deaton’s face. “I swore to your parents that I would protect you.”

“Why don’t I remember you?”

Instead of answering, Deaton looked between Stiles and Derek. His face took on a look that Stiles knew too well, one that said he wasn’t going to answer the question directly, that he would give Derek every resource and every riddle that would lead to the answer, but not the answer itself. Stiles didn’t know why Deaton looked at him, he hadn’t asked any questions, but he knew that the veterinarian was thinking about something, and that something would most definitely involve him.

“I think both of you would benefit from some background before you are thrown into lessons,” Deaton said finally.

Without another word, or any kind of prompting, the family left the room, leaving Deaton, Derek, and Stiles in there alone. Derek and Stiles were still sitting at the table, nursing cups of coffee that were no longer steaming, and Deaton was still standing, but he was closer to the table than he had been only moments before.

“What kinds of lessons were you talking about?” Stiles asked as Deaton took a seat at the table, sitting across from where Derek and he were sitting.

Instead of answering, Deaton started in on the background information that he claimed the two sitting at the table needed. He started from the very beginning, and continued up until the moment they were sitting in, and explaining everything in between.

Since Deaton knew more about Derek, and knew about Derek’s family, he started with Derek’s story first. Some of the things Derek already knew, and asked the veterinarian, not too nicely, why he was telling them about it, but Deaton would just ignore him. Sometimes, when Stiles would look over at Derek, he would wonder if the werewolf was taking all of this nostalgia very well.

The beginning of the story was the beginning of Talia Hale’s life as an alpha werewolf. Her and her mate, Connor, had just been mated when she became alpha, and almost immediately after that alphas from around the state had started to show up and challenge her as an alpha. The Hale pack was large before she came into power, and they took a lot of territory from the area, and everyone wanted the members of the pack and the territory. No one expected that the young alpha would be as strong as she was or have as strong of a pack as she did. Normally, when a new alpha came into authority, the entire pack was in disarray, even if the alpha had been part of the pack in the first place. For many people, Talia Hale proved her competence when she completely skipped over the chaos of taking over for her father.

Once the challenging alphas and their packs had left, Derek’s older sister, Laura, had been born. With dark hair and dark eyes, young Laura had looked more like her mother than she had her father. With a strong and independent yet loud and obnoxious attitude, she acted more like her father than she did her mother. Even from a young age she had had a knack for annoying people into submission, or getting into their thoughts enough that they would be convinced that they wanted to do what she wanted them to do. All in all, young Laura had been a bit of a nightmare. She could be quite the terror, especially to the other young members of the pack, but her parents took her attitude in stride. The two hadn’t been planning on starting a family of their own as soon as they had, especially when they had an entire pack to take care of already, but Laura was a pleasant surprise.

Not long after, Derek came along. In his mannerisms, and in how he looked, he was a lot like his mother. He was quiet, and easily taken under Laura’s loud shadow, and he thought more. He didn’t like to rush into things, but sometimes he would if he felt the need had arisen. The one thing that made him look like his father was his eyes. Where Laura had their mother’s dark brown eyes, Derek had his father’s green ones. With only about a year between the siblings, it would have been much harder for the parent’s to deal with them if Derek had been the same as Laura. Where Laura would need constant attention because of the fact that she was loud and liked to get into everything, Derek could be sat down on the couch, or anywhere else, and could remain there for hours.

Until Derek was eleven, he had gone through the same things his sister had gone through, and the same things werewolves everywhere went through. He didn't have control over his shift yet, so if he got angry about something his ears would become pointed, he would develop sharp teeth, and his nails would elongate into claws. These were normal things though. He could go through training to learn how to control himself and he could go through training to learn how to fight. When he turned eleven, things that didn't normally happen to young werewolves started to happen. 

Going through periods of extreme emotions started to be normal for Derek. At one moment he would be perfectly happy, and then he would either become so angry he would start having a temper tantrum, become so happy that he practically jumped off the walls, or he became upset enough that he would sit and cry for hours. Any time he was upset, he wouldn't let anyone near him. He would lock himself up in his room and refuse to talk to anyone until the feeling passed. And then when he did tell someone what was going on, it was always Laura that he told, and what he told her never made any sense. When Derek would finally calm down enough to talk to his sister he would look at her and tell her that he was fine, it wasn't him. Then, when his sister would stare at him with a look of confusion, he would tell her that it wasn't him that was upset, it was _them_. 

When Laura told their parents what Derek had told her, they took him to Deaton immediately. Being mated themselves, they had experienced what Derek was going through, and knew for sure that was what he was going through, but didn't understand why it was happening to him at such a young age. The normal age for a werewolf to start being able to feel what their mates were feeling, if of course they had a mate that they were destined to be with, was twenty. No one younger had been heard of to date. 

"Your parents were extremely worried about you. I told them they needn't be since you were going through exactly what they thought you were, but they insisted that I look into it further, since you had become the youngest werewolf to find their mate."

Derek scrunched up his face. "I don't understand why it was such a big deal though, and why don't I remember going in to see you? I was eleven, I should definitely be able to remember that."

"I'll get to explaining that Derek, but right now I'm telling you about you finding your mate and what an incredible thing that was,” Deaton paused, as if waiting for Derek to insist on the vet telling him why he had no memories of what the older man was talking about. "After I convinced your parents that you were fine, that there was nothing wrong with you, they wanted to tell you about your mate. They wanted you to find whoever they were because they knew that finding your mate was an important thing in a werewolf’s life and they didn't think that anything could go wrong with you finding yours a little earlier than most. But you didn't want to. You claimed that your mate was too sad to have to deal with a mate, and that since they were human they wouldn't understand. You were all about helping your mate, and not putting them through any extra stress."

As Deaton talked about Derek as a child, Stiles paid close attention to the man’s words, but kept his eyes on Derek. As the vet talked Stiles could see Derek scrunch his face every once in a while, a clear indicator that the werewolf didn't remember what Deaton was telling him had happened. 

When Derek turned twelve, his parents finally got him to compromise with them on his mate. He would tell them what he knew about his mate, but he still did not want to go find the child. Even though a year had passed since the overwhelming emotions had started, Derek said that there were still times when he would get overpowered by the sense of disparity his mate was feeling. His parents had agreed, figuring that was the most they would be able to do until Derek got older and fully understood what this meant, and started questioning Derek. 

Other than knowing that the child was younger than himself, human, and going through some kind of situation that warranted him being so upset all the time, Derek didn't really know much about his mate. His parents had been hoping for a gender, a name, maybe even an address, but none of this had popped up. When they asked Derek about these things, the little boy had scrunched his eyebrows together, seemingly confused by their line of questioning. And when they asked why he was confused, he said because he didn't know that those things were important. The Hale's had immediately stopped questioning Derek, knowing now that they weren't going to get much out of him. 

And they were content, but a little annoyed, with not knowing these things if Derek didn't think they were important, until one night Derek started experiencing more than just crippling sadness. 

One of a parent's worst nightmares is to wake up to one of their children screaming, and that was exactly what Talia and Connor woke up to late one night. The two were immediately out of their bed and running down the hallway, following the sound until they rushed into Derek's room. Their son was sitting up in bed, fully awake, with his blanket wrapped tightly around his legs and tears streaming down his young face. His mother immediately picked him up and put him in her lap, gently shushing him as his loud screams turned to small whimpers. No one said anything more until Derek was fully calm again. When they asked what was wrong, neither of them was surprised when their son said it wasn't him that was upset, it was _them_.

The morning after, Talia and Connor had gone into the veterinary clinic, begging for Deaton to tell them some way to help their son. Deaton told them there wasn't a way for them to only help Derek, if his mate was the one going through the severe anguish they had to help Derek's mate in order to help their son. They insisted they would do anything that would help their son. 

A few days later, Deaton had brought the couple back into the clinic, after hours, so that he could teach them a way that they could teach Derek that would help him and his mate. He taught them a way that Derek would be able to send calming thoughts that would make his mate feel like there was someone there, helping him get through what he was dealing with, even though Derek didn't know exactly what it was. 

After Derek learned this effective way of helping his mate, his parents didn't have to go into see Deaton much anymore. The vet still took care of any serious injuries that needed a little help before they could heal, and he still worked as an advisor to the pack, but he wasn't needed as much once Derek was able to calm his mate down. 

"After the fire, I had no contact with what remained of the Hale pack. Neither you or Laura remembered me as anyone more than a doctor, so neither of you knew that I would help you if you needed it. For the most part, I knew what was going on with the two of you, but I didn't know much of the specifics. Once you and Laura left, I took to the veterinary clinic, and that was how I came across Stiles. Of course, I know more about what was happening with you Derek than I do with Stiles," Deaton said, effectively moving on from talking about Derek to talking about Stiles. "Since I was there for everything that happened with you, I knew everything, but since I only met Stiles three years ago, I have a bit less information."

"Wait, before you start telling us Stiles’s background story, I want to know why I don't remember going in to see you or learning how to calm Stiles," Derek said, cutting Deaton off before he could start on another subject.

"Mostly it is because when you were around me your parents didn't act any differently than they did with any of your other doctors. You don't remember me because I did not leave an impression on your young mind. But also I have heard that your parents took some of the memories from you. I have heard that some of the anguish that you went through because of your mate was taken from you, but with good reason I'm sure."

"That would explain why I don't remember any of what you just told us."

Deaton smiled, but did not respond. Instead, he went on to talking about Stiles. 

The first part of Stiles’s story was when he was sixteen and his best friend was bitten by a werewolf. That had been the beginning of all of the problems in Beacon Hills, but not the beginning of everything for Stiles. 

Deaton explained to the two that what Derek had been feeling, the crippling anguish, had been Stiles having panic attacks. He explained what had happened to the boy’s mother, explaining how the Frontotemporal Dementia that she had been diagnosed with had been untreatable and had eventually caused her death. And that had been what had led to Stiles’s panic attacks. 

The thing was that discussing Stiles’s mom and telling a brief overview of what had happened in Beacon Hills over the last three years should have been enough. That should have concluded Stiles’s story, but it didn't because there was something about Stiles that he didn't know everything about. All of the attacks had been known to Stiles, he had been there when they had happened and he had helped Scott eradicate the problem, but that wasn't the important part. The important part had to do with Stiles’s mother. 

Claudia Stilinski had come from a pack of werewolves, but hadn't been one herself. Both her parents, all her siblings, and all the rest of the pack members had been werewolves, but Claudia hadn't. Growing up, Claudia hadn’t thought there was anything special about her, because nothing had showed. She didn't change like everyone else, was seen as weaker than everyone else, and had never been allowed to go on a full moon run with everyone else. She had been isolated her whole childhood because of what she wasn't, but never knew what she was. It wasn't until she was eighteen, and her pack was being attacked, that anyone figured it out. 

As usual, Claudia had been told to stay in the house, to stay safely in the basement and ignore what was going on outside. As usual, Claudia hadn't been able to obey the commands her parents had given her and had sat at the small window that sat level with the ground and watched as her family members were attacked. She watched as everyone she loved fought for their territory, and watched as people died, and watched as it became evident that her family was not going to win this. 

She knew it was stupid, and had no idea what she would do, but she ran from the basement and straight outside, joining up with her family as they fought. She realized quickly that she had forgotten to grab any sort of weapon, and knew then that any chance of helping was shot. 

When her parents saw her, they had taken their attention off of the two werewolves they had been fighting side by side and had rushed over to their daughter, immediately going to protect her. As it turned out, they didn't need to. 

Soon after Claudia had ran outside, the battle had started showing favoritism toward the attackers, and more and more friendly faces fell. Claudia had jumped over loved ones as she had ran to the spot, but hadn’t processed them until she stood with her parents in front of her, holding a defensive position, and watched as one of her cousins got someone's claws thrust through their stomach. She had let out a blood curdling scream, followed by a shout of "stop!" and watched as everyone obeyed her command. She had felt a different sensation running through her body, making her feel like she had all the power in the world right at her fingertips. 

The pack that had attacked had scattered, going back to wherever they were from, and Claudia's pack had worked on tending the wounded and the dead. None of them thought twice about Claudia possessing magic, but her parents had sent her to see some people that would be able to help her control the power. 

"So wait," Stiles said, stopping Deaton from continuing, "You're telling me that my mom was just like I am?"

"Yes," the vet said, nodding. 

"Then why didn't she tell me?"

"She was probably waiting until you got older so that you would understand more about the entire situation. Once she got sick, she probably didn't want to tell you because she didn't want you to be more stressed than you already were."

Stiles tried to wrap his head around the information, quickly finding that that was going to take some time. His mom had had magic, she had been able to do the same things, and probably more, that he could. Part of him was excited about this, because he had learned something new about his mother, but another part of him was disappointed because he knew that this was something that they had shared, but never got the chance to do anything with. 

"Does my dad know?"

Deaton nodded. "Yes, your father knew everything that I just told you, and probably more. There are probably a lot of stories about your mother and her powers that he could tell you." 

Deaton paused, looking between the two boys that he had been talking to for the past few hours. Both of them looked weary and tired, like they had just finished running a marathon and couldn't think of doing anything but collapsing on a bed and sleeping for three days straight. He was surprised that Stiles hadn't said more, and that was really what told him that Stiles was taking an extra amount of time to fully process the information he had just even given. If Stiles had already figured everything out that he could, he would be talking a mile a minute and asking more questions. 

"Why don't the two of you go to the room that Evelyn made up for you, and we can talk more about this at a later time?"

The two boys got up from the table, leaving their untouched coffee cups behind. 

...

When the two reached the room, they paid enough attention to it to notice some minor details, but otherwise didn't see anything. They saw they had a bed big enough for the two of them that was covered in yellow, they saw there was a white desk and a matching swivel chair, and they saw that their bags were sitting next to the bed. They didn't notice that the room didn't look like just a guest room but a room that someone lived in. 

Derek sat down in the swivel chair, watching Stiles as the boy paced the room. 

"I'm not really sure what to do with all of this information," Stiles said, reaching up and scratching at the back of his neck. 

"I'm not really sure either. I don't know how to even react to most of what Deaton told us."

Stiles stopped in front of Derek, letting out a long sigh and catching Derek's eye. 

"Come here," Derek said after a moment of silently staring at each other. 

Stiles stepped into the space between Derek's legs, gently wrapping his arms around the werewolf's neck as Derek placed his hands on the boy’s hips. "So that was you that pulled me from all of those panic attacks, huh?" Stiles asked. 

"I guess so," Derek replied, looking up at Stiles with a blank face. 

Stiles smacked Derek on the arm, eliciting a loud "ow!" from the man even though he knew it didn't hurt him, but it got Derek to put some emotion on his face. "You know, the more I learn about you, the faster I fall."

Derek smirked. "Are you saying you're falling for my irresistible charms?"

Stiles smacked Derek's arm again, rolling his eyes at the same time. "I can't believe you know how to make a joke," Stiles said, earning a small glare from Derek. "And no, I'm saying that I'm falling for the good intentions of a young, confused werewolf who just happened to grow up to become some serious eye candy."

"Your eye candy."

Stiles bent down a little so he could rest his forehead against Derek's. "The universe obviously wanted me to have something hot to look at, I'm not so sure why it gave me an emotionally constipated werewolf, but you're hot so it works."

Derek rolled his eyes, but bent his chin up just a little bit so he could press his lips to Stiles’s.

...

Derek and Stiles woke up the next morning, wrapped around each other. When they opened their eyes, the first thing they saw was the other, and was completely content with that. They laid there and kissed for a little while, just until everything they had learned the day before had come crashing down on them. 

"We need to talk to the people that we're staying with," Stiles claimed, practically jumping from the bed and rummaging around in his bag for some clean clothes. 

Derek followed suit, but a bit slower. 

When the two made it downstairs, Deaton and everyone else were already sitting down at the table, food being passed between them.

The matriarch of the family looked up  at the two of them when they entered the room and smiled. "You two can sit wherever you want, and we realized that none of us introduced ourselves yesterday so I'm Evelyn, my husband is Leon, our daughter's name is Isabelle, and our son's name is Mason."

Stiles said small hellos to everyone as he sat down, and Derek nodded at everyone. 

The two set to getting food and coffee and then when the current conversation had started to die down, Stiles had brought up his own important conversational topic. 

"I'm here to figure out how to use my power right?" He asked, directing the question toward Evelyn and Leon. 

"Of course," Evelyn said, smiling again. 

"Then I have one thing to ask; is there a way to cover up the scent of myself and my magic so that others don't know about it?"

Evelyn and Leon shared a look, silently discussing Stiles question. 

Finally, Leon looked at him and said, "Of course, would you like us to find it and put the spell on you?"

Stiles nodded, somehow feeling safer already. He hoped that by using this spell, creeps like Brian would have less of a motive to be a creep.  


	14. Chapter 14

Five people walked into the dimly lit room, looking much more confident than they felt. All six of them knew what was coming, and it wasn't good. When you're the lowest on the food chain, and you fail to accomplish something you were ordered to do by someone at the top of the food chain, you knew the repercussions were going to be bad. And that was why the omegas that came walking into the room knew that they wouldn't be leaving it without withstanding some kind of injury first. 

In the back of the otherwise bare room, right against the furthest wall from the door, there was a long, wooden table with five matching chairs sitting behind it. Each chair held a person that looked to have no connection to each other, except for the two at one end that were identical twins. Each of them had a different look, but the same confidence that showed they were a leader, an alpha. 

As was custom, Mia, the leader of the omegas, greeted each of the alphas by name. "Deucalion, Aidan, Ethan, Kali, Ennis," she said, keeping her head bowed to show submission. 

"Mia," Deucalion said, acknowledging the girl with a growl in his voice, quickly noticing the lack of a pale, lanky boy. "We're you unable to get the boy?"

Mia cleared her throat. "Yes, he, uh, managed to get us arrested. By the time we were out, he was no longer in Beacon Hills."

Deucalion's eyebrows shot up immediately, reaching up to his hair line. If Mia had been looking at the other four alphas, she would notice that they were looking at her in the same fashion. Each of the five alphas were just as mad as the others, and possibly feeding off of the negative energy that seemed to slither through the room. 

"Please do tell us then, why the five of you came back," Deucalion said after a moment. 

"It's a long story."

"Then I expect you to tell us everything."

With one look around at the other omegas, each of which had their chins held against their chests, knowing that that position would be the least likely to get them into any trouble, Mia started telling the five expectant alphas about their quest to capture Stiles Stilinski. 

"Before we could get close enough to him, Stiles and his friend, Lydia Martin, had noticed enough about us to realize that we were a threat. They did not know why we were in Beacon Hills, or that we were actually after Stiles, until we had been arrested and began getting questioned."

"And how did they figure it out?" One of the other alphas, Kali, asked. 

Mia looked back at one of the other omegas, a man about her age with sandy brown hair, tan skin, and a muscly build. He looked tough enough to beat up even the biggest of the five alphas, but an omegas strength, no matter how tough they looked, is no match for that of an alpha. "Elliot told Stiles about what we were doing there when the boy snuck into the interrogation room he was in."

Everyone in the room heard Elliot's heartbeat quicken once the words were out of Mia's mouth. He was expecting some sort of repercussion just for telling the boy their plan, but none came. The four alphas and the five omegas looked at Deucalion as they listened to Elliot's heart beat like it was trying to beat out of his chest, and waited for the alpha to stand from his chair, and do something to the boy. But he did not move, not even enough to twitch a muscle, or give any other sign that he was going to do anything. 

"Do go on then Mia," Deucalion said. 

Mia nodded, even though she knew Deucalion had not seen the movement. "As I said, by the time we were let out of the jail, the boy had left town. We suspect that his father had had something to do with keeping us there for so long, since he is the Sheriff.  We think that he kept us in there long enough to give Stiles a head start, to allow him to get far enough away from Beacon Hills.

"We stayed in the town for a little while after the boy had left to observe his friends and his father. None of them seemed to acknowledge the fact that he was gone. We stuck close to his father, keeping a lookout at his house at night and at the Sheriff station during the day. We also stayed close to his friends. They were all out of school since the school year for the graduating class, which included Stiles and his friends, had already finished and graduation day was the week before. At least one of us was positioned at the houses of Lydia Martin, Scott McCall, Allison Argent, and Jackson Whittemore throughout the day. They were also followed if they left the house. 

"There was an oddity found at one point though," Mia said, scrunching her face as she thought about the information they found by sitting and listening into each building. "We had followed Scott to work at the veterinary clinic one day and found that the vet there, Dr. Alan Deaton, knew what was going on. He had been in contact with Stiles once, sending a package to a hotel he had stayed at. We got our hands on the package before it was sent out and found that it contained a jar full of mountain ash. We did not find out what the intended use for it was exactly, but we knew he was going to use it for protection. We assume that something happened; he was most likely attacked, after he had left and needed a way to keep himself safe on his trip. 

"After we found the mountain ash, there was a week where there was nothing else. None of them talked about Stiles and none of them had come into any kind of contact with the boy, so we decided we were going to have to take a more direct route if we wanted more information. Again we split up, one of us going to talk to the Sheriff, one of us going to talk to the vet, and the rest of us waiting for his friends outside of the school. 

"The meeting with the Sheriff was fairly uneventful. He did not give us any information, he just told us that we needed to leave Beacon Hills and if any of us tried to harm any of the citizens, he had wolfsbane bullets and was not afraid to use them. The visit with the vet proved to have the same effect, no information but we did find that his practice was surrounded with mountain ash, making it impossible for us to get past the front desk without his permission. Finally, the meeting with Stiles’s friends. It was a bit more eventful, but still led to no new knowledge. The teenagers were more likely to get into a fight with us, which they did as soon as they were off of school property and knew that they could not get detentions for fighting. No one that knows Stiles had any idea of where the was."

"So the five of you had been out started by an eighteen year old boy and his friends?" Aidan asked, not even trying to keep the condescending tone out of his voice. 

Mia dropped her head to her chest once again. As she talked she kept her head up and watched the alphas take in her story, watching their faces for a flicker of emotion or a sign that they thought she was lying. Of course the fact that try could hear her heartbeat made it unlikely for her to be able to lie to them, they still had a tendency to doubt the stories they were told. 

"Continue with your story Mia," Deucalion said a moment later. 

Mia looked up to see the five alphas looking at her expectantly. She wondered for a moment of the head to chest move had been the wrong one. "Um, after that we left Beacon Hills and began tracking where the boy had gone. He had first gone to a little bed and breakfast, and we believe that is where the attack that had made him want the mountain ash had happened. We took rooms there for the night and waited for everyone, or almost everyone, to fall asleep and then we had begun searching the building. With its small size, it had been easy to find the room that Stiles had stayed at. The room smelled as if someone had become very scared in the room, and since the only pungent smells we got were of Stiles’s scent and the scents of the people staying in the room, we figured the fear had been Stiles’s. We then tried to talk to the people that owned the place, specifically the girl that had working the reception desk when we walked in, but she was reluctant to give us any information. We don't think that she knew why Stiles was scared because when we asked her if anything weird had happened a few weeks back, and we mentioned him, she started asking us if we knew anything about it. After a few questions, our line of questioning must have given her a bad feeling, because she asked us to leave immediately.

"The next place we tracked him to was a hotel. Nothing important happened there, but he stayed for a long time. We figured he was probably getting money somehow, which suggested that his dad had been sending him money or at least giving him access to moment but had not been talking to his son. He stayed around the area for a long time, and many places had his scent. A local diner had an abundance of his scent, and it seemed that he spent a lot of time there. We thought he had probably been going there about once a day. 

"We didn't understand why he would be going there so often though. He didn't know anyone from the town, so he wasn't going to meet up with anyone, and even if it was for the diner atmosphere, that wasn't the only one in the area. We went in a few times, trying to figure out why he had been going there so often before we decided to move on. One morning, after we had gone the past two nights, we figured it out. There was a girl that worked there that still had a faint trace of Stiles’s scent on her. We followed her home that night, and found that Stiles must have moved from the hotel to her house because it had a strong trace of his scent, even a bit stronger than it was at the hotel, suggesting that he had been there later than he had at the hotel. We watched her and her house for a while, wondering if Stiles would come back or not, and trying to see if she would have any contact with him. After three days he had not shown up and she had not talked to him. After that, we came back here."

"Did you talk to her at all?" Ethan asked. "To see if she knew anything about where Stiles had gone?"

"We did talk to her once," Mia said, nodding. "We asked if she knew Stiles Stilinski, but she already knew that there was something off about us because we could not get to her front door. Her house was also surrounded with mountain ash."

"So then you left?" Deucalion chimed in, eyebrows rising once again. "He did not stay there did he? There was definitely a trace of him leaving correct?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you not follow it? Why did you think it was a good idea for the five of you to come back here instead of following the trail until you found where he was? Eventually, you would have run into him, and then you would have been able to bring him back here. Please tell me Mia, why did you think it was a good idea to come back to us when you did not have Stiles in your possession?"

By the end of Deucalion's rant, he seemed coiled and ready for a fight. He had already gotten up from his chair, the other four alphas following his lead, and his mouth was curled into a menacing smirk. He seemed ready to have a reason to hurt, or kill, one of the omegas and he seemed like he thought he already had one. He had asked the five of them to do one simple thing, and they had failed. Instead of following the boy to wherever he was now, they had thought it a good idea to come back and tell the story of how they had failed. Deucalion wanted an explanation, but he wasn't going to wait very long to get one. 

Each of the five alphas approached an omega with Deucalion stopping in front of Mia. The four alphas stood in front of their chosen omegas, waiting for Deucalion to do something, to give them direction on what was going on. Deucalion stood in front of Mia, getting excessively close, and positioned his hand so it was wrapped gently around her neck. The other alphas did the same with the other omegas. 

"So why did you come back Mia?" Deucalion asked, the words coming out as a whisper but being heard like a shout. 

"We came to tell you that Stiles wasn't traveling alone. We wanted to know what you wanted us to do."

Deucalion's hand tightened slightly around Mia's neck. "What do you mean he isn't traveling alone?"

"There was someone else with him when he left his friend's house. It was a man, and he smelled like an alpha. Stiles is no longer traveling by himself, and he doesn't only have a rag tag ground of teenagers like he did in Beacon Hills, he has an alpha with him."

Deucalion moved away from Mia, clenching his hands into fists. "Did the two of them seem like they were together, or did it seem like there were no other bonds than the ones Stiles had with the girl he was staying with?"

"It was more."

"If it was more, than the alpha he's traveling with must be his mate. The five of you are heading back out, dispatch the mate and bring Stiles back. I don't care how you do it, but get it done."

Deucalion had returned to the table, grasping the edge of it so hard his knuckles turned white. The other alphas took his lead and let go of the omegas, walking back to sit behind the table after they had done so. Mia and the other four omegas left, feeling grateful that they were still alive after giving Deucalion the news that he wanted to hear the least. 

...

The omegas had been given the chance to shower, change into different clothes, and to grab more extra clothes before having to leave again. The five of them piled into the small, black car they had been driving in for a while now, and headed back to where they had last tracked Stiles. After getting to his friend's house, the five of them tracked the boy further, until they were at a large house that was crawling with people. There were at least ten people out in front of the house, and the five omegas could tell that there were many more in the back yard, and more inside the house. Without even saying anything, they decided there were too many people to try a stakeout.

It would have mattered more if there wasn't another trail of Stiles’s scent leading away from the busy household. 

The omegas tracked the boy about an hour away from the bustling house, to come up to a smaller house that had noticeably less people around. After pausing for a moment, the omegas decided there were currently six people inside the house, and one of them was Stiles. Mia, who was driving, drove the car away from the house, and parked it about a mile away from the house. 

"So what should we do now?" One of the other omegas asked. It was Ada, a girl who was a year younger than Mia and Elliot, with long, brunette hair and doe colored eyes. She was the youngest, and smallest, of the five omegas. 

Mia shrugged. "Are you guys up for sitting in bushes and listening in right now or would you rather wait until tomorrow?"

The five decided now would be the best time and quietly got out of the car, walking up to the house as quietly as possible. They each took a spot around the house where they would be concealed. Each of them were thankful that the people who had owned the house seemed enthusiastic about shrubbery. 

Almost immediately, they heard Stiles’s voice. 

"So how does it work though? I would feel a lot more comfortable if I knew what was going to happen."

"I would also feel a lot more comfortable knowing what was going to happen," the omegas heard a deep, unrecognized voice say. 

"It's just a concealing spell, there's really nothing special to it, other than we choose what it conceals. We'll have to use a little of your blood, as a way to tell what is being concealed, we do some chanting, and then it's done," a different, unrecognized voice said. 

"And when are we going to do this?" Stiles asked. 

"Two days from now."

The omegas looked in each other’s direction, and shared smiles. Two days from then would be the day where they got the Stilinski boy and they took him back to Deucalion. 


	15. Chapter 15

"You need to go to sleep," Derek grumbled, flipping over so that he was lying on his stomach with one of his arms under his pillow and the other thrown out on top of Stiles’s chest. 

"I know," Stiles said with a sigh, "But I can’t get my brain to slow down."

"I know. I can tell every time you are about to fall asleep just to wake up again. Your heartbeat starts slowing down and then suddenly it's racing."

"Have I been keeping you up?"

Derek didn't say anything.

"Well now I feel like an asshole, why didn't you say something earlier?"

Derek opened one eye and peered up at Stiles. The younger man was lying on his side, facing Derek, and looking at him with wide, alert eyes. He looked as if he had just woken up, but Derek knew that he had never managed to fall asleep. 

"I didn't say it was a bad thing Stiles," Derek said, moving his hand so he was cupping Stiles’s jaw, and opening his other eye so he could see how Stiles reacted. "If you're awake, I might as well be awake."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "That's bull crap."

"What's got you so on edge?" Derek asked instead of taking the bait. Stiles needed every hour of sleep he could get, and if that meant leaving the bickering behind for a little while so Stiles could talk about what was bothering him, then Derek had no problem with it. 

Stiles shrugged, even though the gesture looked more like awkward wiggling since he was lying down. "I'm not nervous about the spell okay?"

"Okay, I believe you."

"But I'm feeling a little, I don't know, anxious, about it. I don't think that they're going to try to kill me, even though my mind keeps coming up with scenarios where they do. I know that nothing bad is going to happen tomorrow, but I still can't stop thinking about it."

"That's normal Stiles. This is a big thing; it would be more odd if you were completely fine with it. If you say you aren't nervous, then I believe you, but I also understand that you're not completely emotionless, and I understand that you don't know these people." Derek looked down, not meeting Stiles’s gaze. "The only reason I'm mot ripping out throats right now is because I know I'll be there to protect you." This time when Derek was talking it wasn't as loud, as if he was telling Stiles a personal secret instead of reassuring the boy on the fact that everything was going to be just fine. 

Stiles laughed, earning a confused look from Derek. "It's nothing, I really like you, you know that?" He asked. 

Derek smiled. "I really like you too," he replied, wrapping his hand around the back of Stiles’s neck, and pulling the boy closer and into a kiss. 

It didn't take Stiles very long to fall asleep after that. 

...

After getting a full eight hours of sleep, Stiles woke up to find the other side of the bed unoccupied. He whirled around, wrapping the blankets tightly around himself by accident, just to make sure that Derek wasn't lurking in a corner, or maybe even getting dressed. He found that Derek was nowhere in the room, but one glance at the clock told him why. It was already ten minutes before noon, and Derek had managed to fall asleep way before Stiles had. 

After stretching and popping multiple joints, Stiles got out of bed and padded down to the kitchen. There, sitting at the table, was Derek, Deaton, Evelyn, Leon, Isabelle, and Mason. Each person had a mug in front of them, but the contents of each individual mug was unknown to Stiles. He noticed though, that everyone looked like they had already taken showers and gotten dressed for the day. 

"Has everyone been up for very long?" Stiles asked, moving over to the coffee maker to grab himself a mug of the steaming, caffeinated, liquid.

"Derek told us about your late night," Evelyn said with a shrug, "We figured you could use the sleep so we let you sleep in. Besides, it doesn't matter what time of day we do this."

Stiles nodded, and looked to Derek as he sat in the chair next to the older man. "You told them?" He asked. 

Derek answered with a shrug, but one look at his face told Stiles that he hadn't told them everything, and more specifically he hadn't told them that Stiles’s mind was convinced they were going to murder him. 

"We won't start until about three now," Leon said, "So you can have some time to take a shower and relax for a little while."

Stiles nodded. "You guys could have woken me up; seriously it would have been fine."

"You needed your sleep," Derek said, uncrossing his arms from his chest and laying a hand on the one of Stiles’s that the boy had lying on the table. 

"Alright Der," Stiles said as a reply, and then immersed himself in the conversation that the others were having. 

At one o'clock, Stiles traveled to the bathroom, taking a shower, brushing his teeth, and changing into some clean clothes. He was starting to feel a little nervous, as it was two thirty by the time that he managed to go back to the kitchen to join the others once again. Butterflies were practically bombing his stomach as he kept trying to tell his mind that everything was going to be fine. 

 _They're just going to conceal my scent so that other werewolves can't tell that I'm still unmated. I'm going to be alive once they're done, Derek won't have to do anything stupid to protect me, and I'll be able to go back to Beacon Hills. Then, Derek and I can get the whole mating thing done so that the other werewolves will stop trying to get me. I'll be able to see my dad and Scott and all my other friends. I'll be able to go to college in the fall, and live a relatively normal life,_ he told himself, thinking about all the things that he would do when he first got back to Beacon Hills. _First I'm going to hug my dad, and then make him and Scott update me on what has happened while I've been gone. Then I'll talk to my dad about the case he's working on and I'll let him have a steak even though his diet probably went to shit while I've been gone. Then I'll spend a day playing video games with Scott. Somewhere in there Derek will have to meet everyone and oh god he's going to have to meet my dad. Dads going to want him to come to Sunday breakfast and then he's going to get interrogated and someone's going to have to tell him that Derek is a werewolf and we're not just dating, we're mates. Then dads going to be furious. He'll probably go talk to Argent about getting more wolfsbane bullets and then he'll be able to threaten Derek. Going home is going to be so embarrassing._

"Stiles?" Derek asked, pulling Stiles out of his internal crisis. "Are you okay?"

Stiles shook his head a bit, physically clearing his thoughts, and looked over at Derek with a smile. "Why do you ask?"

Derek's eyebrows rose. "Your heartbeat started going crazy and you have a horrified look on your face. Are you nervous now?"

"Not about this, no."

"Then what are you scared about?"

"I'll tell you later," Stiles said, just as Leon got up from his chair, announcing that they could do the spell if Stiles was ready. Honestly, Stiles was ready for a distraction. 

...

"I figured we could give you a demonstration on how this is going to work before we do it to you," Evelyn said as the last person stepped off of the stairs leading into the basement. 

The basement, the place where the spell was going to happen, looked like most basements Stiles had seen before. It was completely decorated: carpeting lined the floor everywhere except for a corner that had gray pavement instead, there was a flat screen television, a few couches, and pictures lining the walls. Some of the pictures were paintings of scenery like mountains or a lake, and then others were photographs of people that Stiles assumed were family. In the corner that did not have carpet, there was a stone pedestal with a glass bowl and a knife sitting on top of it. As the group got closer, because of course they were going to the area with a deadly weapon, Stiles noticed that there was something in the glass bowl. He was unable to tell exactly what was in it until everyone was crowded around the pedestal. Lying inside the bowl, looking completely harmless as it should, was a pile of dirt that had a few small rocks mixed in with it. 

"What's the dirt for?" Stiles asked, looking to Evelyn and Leon for an answer. 

"It's part of the spell. Since you're asking the earth to protect you by shrouding your scent, you must give something back. In this case it needs to be something that is tied to you, which can link you to the earth, we've found that blood works best with this," Leon said in reply. 

"So I'm going to cut myself and let the blood flow into the dirt and rocks as you guys chant the spell?"

Evelyn, Leon, Isabelle, and Mason all nodded. 

"Then let’s get on with it," Stiles said, letting out a small sigh. 

"Didn't you want to see how it's going to work first?" Isabelle asked, already grabbing up the knife. 

"No," Stiles said, reaching out to take the knife from her, "It's fine, if you're willing to show me how it's going to work, you must know what you're doing."

Everyone in the room nodded and took up places around the pedestal. Stiles took his place right next to it, holding the knife in one hand and holding his other hand over the bowl. Evelyn, Leon, Mason, and Isabelle formed a circle around the pedestal and Stiles, and Deaton and Derek stood a little ways away, watching as everything happened. Derek had his arms crossed over his chest, feeling displeased by the fact that Stiles had refused a demonstration. He might trust the family that were doing this, but he still had his doubts. 

The four witches started saying the spell as Stiles slowly cut a line across his hand. He gritted his teeth as he slid the shining metal across his palm, watching as the bright red blood blossomed from the cut and slowly trickled into the dirt in the bowl. 

Derek stood and watched until he heard footsteps coming from outside the house. He turned to Deaton, "Is anyone else supposed to be here right now?" He asked quietly, trying not to do anything to interrupt the spell. 

Deaton shrugged, unhelpfully. "There are many people that work with this family Derek, including other family members, I'm sure it's just one of them."

The two of them turned back to watch what was happening in front of them, Derek keeping an ear toward the people outside. 

The blood in the dirt and rock mixture began to glow as the spell was chanted again and again. Stiles watched as his blood began spreading itself thin, moving to cover the dirt, and then began to be absorbed. 

The people outside were walking quietly, Derek could tell by the light footsteps they were taking. They were moving toward the door, then they were at the door, then they were slowly turning the doorknob. 

"I'm going to check," Derek said quietly, walking back to the staircase that would take him back to the first level of the house. 

When he reached the top, he heard five people talking quietly, and laughing, saying how it had been so easy to get into the house. They had just walked through the front door, and Derek was now in the kitchen. All he had to do was go through the doorway in the kitchen and he would see the people who had entered the house. He knew without a doubt that these people were not family members and they were not friends of the family. 

"Now all we need to do is get the boy and we can get out of here," one of the voices, a girl, said.   
Derek went through the doorway of the kitchen, seething with the knowledge that they were here to get Stiles. 

"Getting the boy isn't going to be that easy," he said, easily slipping into werewolf form. 

The five paused, taking in his appearance, and let their werewolf forms take hold. 

"You're out numbered," the girl who had spoken earlier said. 

"And the five of you are measly omegas," Derek replied, letting a growl slip through at the end.

The omegas rushed Derek, coming at him two at a time. First Elliot and Ada, each of them coming at him from a different side. Derek swept his leg out, knocking Elliot to the ground, and pushed Ada away so hard that she flew back and hit the wall. Next came Oliver and Cameron, who decided to run straight at Derek. Both of them got knocked away similarly to Ada, Cameron landed next to Ada, but Oliver flew through the doorway straight into the kitchen. 

Everyone down in the basement heard the ruckus from upstairs, but had to wait until the end of the spell to do anything. Once all of Stiles’s blood had soaked into the dirt, Evelyn, Leon, Mason, and Isabelle stopped their chanting and everyone ran up the stairs. 

When they got to the top of the stairs they saw Oliver groaning on the ground, trying to get up. Stiles kicked him in his side as he ran toward the front door. 

Mia was the last omega standing. She told herself that she was not going to fall like the others had. She stood circling Derek, watching him as he watched her. The anger was obvious in his eyes and the air. She could smell his anger toward her and the others, and could see the venomous look in his eyes. 

"Why do you want Stiles?" He asked, surprising Mia. 

"You know why we want him," she replied. 

"Is this to take him from me or because he has magic?"

Mia smirked. "Probably a little of both."

Without any other warning than the minute movements of her muscles, she threw herself at Derek. Derek was prepared and easily threw her off of him, but he wasn't prepared for the other omegas to finally get back up off of the floor and for all of them to also jump on him. They were biting and scratching at his skin, trying to do any kind of damage they could. He could feel blood gushing from a wound in his chest, knew that blood was soaking into all of the clothes that he wore and was also dripping down onto the ground. 

Stiles ran into the kitchen, noticing the omegas. He was about to do something to help Derek when the older man locked eyes with him and yelled "Run!” Stiles didn't want to, he wanted to do anything he could to help Derek, but he didn't know how to control his magic. The family hadn't taught him how. That was supposed to be what they started tomorrow. 

With a nod, Stiles turned around, feeling like a coward. He found Deaton and the two of them ran out of the house and to Stiles’s jeep, not knowing anything about what was happening between the omegas and Derek, or where everyone else had gone. 

...

It was hours later when Stiles and Deaton decided that they couldn't just sit there any longer. Stiles had driven the two of them about a mile away from the house as soon as they had gotten out. They thought that if Derek had been able to get away, he would have went straight to them because he would be able to pick up on their scent. They had sat there for hours without talking; only waiting. The silence hadn't been as weird as it probably should have been. Stiles was used to Deaton being quiet, used to the man listening to him and Scott talk and waiting for the two of them to finish a story before giving any kind of advice, even if the advice had usually been cryptic at best. It was weird for Stiles to be so quiet for so long, and Stiles knew that it must have crossed Deaton's mind a time or two, but he couldn't bring himself to strike up any sort of conversation. He was sitting there to wait for Derek to show up, alive, not have idle conversation. 

When Derek didn't show up a few hours later, they knew they had to leave. They knew that Derek must have died in the fight against the five omegas. 

Stiles pulled from where he had parked the jeep and drove. He didn't know where he was going at the moment, just that he needed to get away. 

"Where are you going Stiles?" Deaton asked after Stiles had driven about twenty miles.   
Stiles shrugged. 

"Are you going to go home?"

"Probably," Stiles sighed, remembering the Thomas pack and how they had enjoyed having Derek and Stiles stay with them. "I think I might go back to the Thomas pack first, tell them what happened, and thank them for sending us to the witches." 

Stiles stubbornly left out the fact that the witches seemed to have run off when the omegas attacked. 

"Sounds like a good plan."

"What are you going to do?"

"I will escort you back to the Thomas pack and then go back to Beacon Hills."

Stiles nodded, letting the conversation taper off. He felt even less compelled to talk now since Derek was most likely dead. 

...

When Stiles arrived back at the Thomas pack house, he was welcomed again with open arms. Everyone in the pack came outside to greet him and waited until everyone had hugged him or shook his hand before asking about Derek's absence. When everyone heard about what happened, Cedric and Luna told him he could stay with them for as long as he wanted, they would be sure to keep him safe. 

The pack mourned for Derek, just like Stiles had hoped. He knew that Derek didn't have much family, and had honestly wanted to come back here to make sure that someone would remember Derek, and would be sad about losing him. 

Luna and Cedric made up a room for Stiles instead of sending him to the guest house. He was relieved since the last time he had been in there he had been with Derek, and this way he would be surrounded by other people and wouldn't feel so alone. That night, after eating dinner with everyone, Stiles went to his room to lay down. He didn't think he would get much sleep, but ended up falling asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.


	16. Chapter 16

_The house he was walking through was familiar, he knew where he was, but didn't at the same time. He had been there before, but he didn't know when. The pictures on the walls held people he knew, but couldn't place. The objects set around the kitchen brought forth the ghost of memories that weren't fully there but he knew he had them. The kitchen was familiar, but that wasn't where he was supposed to be. It was like there was something pulling at him, gripping him by the stomach, making him go toward the front door._

_He walked through the doorway from the kitchen to the foyer where the front door was. There was a man lying on the floor, in a pool of blood, writhing in pain. Stiles hadn't realized it while he was in the kitchen, but the man’s groans reverberated as they left his mouth, filling the air in the house with his pain._

_Stiles got closer, curious to see who this mystery man was. He wondered if the man would be known to him once he saw the face, or if the man’s face would bring ghosts of memory like the things in the kitchen._

_The man writhing in pain was familiar, he knew the man from somewhere. Was he someone that Stiles knew personally, or was he just some actor on a television show that Stiles enjoyed? He waited, staring at the face that was nagging at his memory, waiting for something to come back, waiting for a flood of memories to crowd into his brain and make him unable to think of anything else. He would even wait if this man’s face only brought a name with it, Stiles was tired of the nagging remembrance._

_The man stopped writhing and Stiles saw his injuries that were knitting together as he watched. The deep gash on his stomach quickly became nothing but a scratch, then nothing but a scar, then nothing at all. All of the little bite marks across his arms and face faded to nothing in seconds flat, and Stiles was glad because for some unknown reason the bite marks had made him feel angry._

_After a few more moments of staring at the man, Stiles remembered something. It was a name that Stiles assumed belonged to the man on the floor: Derek. Stiles was unsure of how to use the information, but stood there staring some more anyways, still hoping that something else would come back to him._

_Stiles watched and waited, and eventually the man sat up, shaking his head as if to clear it. He looked around, noting things about the house that obviously told him more than they told Stiles. The man, Derek Stiles reminded himself, suddenly sat still, his eyes going wide._

_"Stiles," he said, sounding almost panicked._

Before Stiles could think about what that meant, he woke up. He was still in the room at the Thomas pack house and it was still dark outside. When he looked over at the clock he saw that he had only been asleep for a few hours, and was pretty disappointed by the fact that he didn't feel like he could go back to sleep. His brain seemed to want to think of his dream and of Derek and that was it, he didn't want to go back to sleep. 

So he lay there, thinking about his dream. _It probably doesn't mean anything,_ he thought, staring up at the ceiling without seeing it. _I want him to still be alive, and that is coming out in my dreams. My subconscious is making me dream of exactly what I want so I will get my hopes up and start to think that if I go back to that house, I will find Derek writhing on the floor, groaning from pain. But I know that if I go there I will probably find him dead on that floor. The omegas will be gone, because of course they would have survived, and Derek will be dead. I don't think I could live with seeing him dead. Even the thought of seeing him that way is making me sick._ Stiles looked down at his stomach, noting the gurgling sound that reverberated through the silent room. _Or maybe I'm just hungry. Either way, I don't want to see Derek dead._

Stiles thought for a few more minutes, stubbornly pushing down any thoughts of Derek being dead. Knowing a fact and thinking about it are two different things, he decided, and he didn't need to think over a fact that he knew. 

...

The next day, Stiles didn't really have a plan for what he was going to do. There wasn't any research for him to do anymore since he knew exactly what he was and had had the witches do the spell to cover his scent, although he was a little skeptical to the fact if it was actually working. There didn't seem to be any supernatural threats against the Thomas pack, which was weird for Stiles since he was used to having a new big baddy to fight all the time, so there wasn't anything for him to research for them. Staying with the Thomas pack was more relaxing than staying in Beacon Hills had been in the last few years. 

Cedric and Luna were going grocery shopping that day, taking some of the other pack members with them since they were shopping for the pack, so there wasn't really anyone for Stiles to talk to. When he and Derek had stayed there, they had mainly kept to themselves except to talk to Cedric and Luna. Stiles was regretting that more and more as he walked past members of the pack and he found he couldn't even remember most of their names. He didn't expect many of them to pay any kind of special attention to him, especially not most of the adults, but wished he could have at least made friends with some of the teenagers the last time he had been there. 

When Stiles got to the kitchen, there weren't many people in there. There were two teenage girls sitting at the counter, but other than them the room was empty. Stiles figured that nearly everyone else was outside. He knew many of the younger kids had been dragging some of the older members out of the house to play tag as he had walked down the stairs only a few moments prior. 

Stiles made his way around the kitchen, remembering where everything was from the last time he was there. He found the cupboard that held the cereal after grabbing a bowl and taking the milk out of the refrigerator. He couldn't help but feel a little happy by the fact that most of the cereals were the over-sugared kind that he liked. It took a moment to decide which one he wanted, but once he grabbed one he took the box of cereal, the bowl and spoon, and the milk over to the table and set it out. He also grabbed a mug of coffee even though it seemed a bit weird to have with his sugary cereal. 

Within minutes of sitting down at the table and pouring his cereal into the bowl and pouring the milk over the cereal, he began to feel the unmistakable feeling of being watched. He knew he had nothing to worry about here, but the feeling was still annoying. With a cautious look up, he saw the girls who were sitting at the counter quickly turn away from him. Their backs shook with silent giggling, practically giving away what they were doing. Stiles decided to go back to his cereal instead of saying anything quite yet. 

A moment later, he got the feeling again, and once again looked up in time to see the girl's heads whip around. 

"Did you want to say anything?" Stiles asked the two of them, knowing his question probably sounded a bit mean, but honestly not meaning to. He really just wanted to know if they needed to tell him something. If there was something in between his teeth or his hair was sticking up in funny angles, he wanted to know. 

The girl's shared a look, silently discussing what they should do. Should they go and sit at the table with Stiles and have a more intimate conversation, or should they stay where they were and make it seem like they wanted to stay far away from Stiles. After a moment, the two seemed to come to a decision, and moved from the chairs at the counter to the chairs siting directly opposite from the one Stiles was sitting at. 

"What was it like?" One of the girls asked, her brown eyes shining with curiosity. 

"Being with your mate," the other girl clarified, jabbing the other girl with a thin elbow to the side. 

The brown eyed girl glared at the other girl, and received a blue eyed glare back. 

"Well we hadn't mated yet," Stiles said, wondering silently how old these girls were and if he should be telling them about mating. They looked to be around sixteen or seventeen, but he didn't know for sure. 

"We know," the girl's said in unison, nodding their heads, nearly identical brunette hair bobbing at their shoulders. 

"We just wanted to know what it was like," the blue eyed girl continued. 

"And we know that it's different for humans, so was there anything that was definitely different since you're human?"

"I know I can't feel the connection the way that werewolves can. Where you guys know when you find the person that you are meant to be with, I don't. I knew I liked Derek, but I didn't know that we were meant to be together. I figured we would date for a while, until he found his mate, and then I would be forgotten. He told me that when a werewolf gets close to their mate, they can feel them kind of like their emotions are right there beside your own, I don't feel that."

"Do you not feel that connection with anyone?" The brown eyed girl asked. 

Stiles shook his head. "Nope, I don't feel like there is any sort of special bond between me and another person. I just know who is my friend and who is my family."

The girl's both looked a little confused, like they couldn't believe that Stiles didn't feel that connection with anyone. He understood why they were confused since they had grown up knowing the werewolf side of things, and not much about the human side of things. As far as Stiles could tell, most of the people of the Thomas pack were werewolves, giving them little need to know about how the humans process things. Stiles knew from his extensive research that there was a lot of information out there about this sort of thing, and it was the information that he had skipped most of the time since he thought that he wouldn't ever need it, but didn't think that many of the younger members of the pack had been exposed to much of it. 

"Did it make you nervous to know that Derek was it, that if you accepted it, you would be with him for the rest of your life?" The blue eyed girl asked after a moment of her and the other girl looking like they were trying to process the new information and store it so they could retrieve it later. 

Stiles shook his head no as he swallowed a mouthful of cereal. "Back home I have a few friends that are werewolves. For the past few years I've been in the middle of a lot of supernatural stuff, so the whole mate thing wasn't something new, I had heard about it before because my best friend is convinced that he's found his mate already."

"So you weren't scared by the whole 'together for life' thing?"

"Not really, I mean I was a little, but not too much."

The girl's looked at each other, looking like they were deciding what to ask next. 

"What was it like being around Derek?" The brown eyed girl asked. 

"Well I was less lonely when he was around," Stiles said and got two blank looks back. "When I left home I didn't think I'd really become close to anyone, let alone find someone that claimed we were mates. It was awesome, and Derek was awesome, and he made this whole thing a lot better."

The girl's moved on from asking about being mates and being with Derek pretty quickly after that. They seemed more interested in what had made him leave Beacon Hills, since it seemed that they hadn't been told about the omegas. Stiles went through the story, telling them about everything that happened from when the omegas had first showed up in Beacon Hills going all the way up to having to leave the witches house after waiting for Derek to come out. He also told them about his friends back home and he told them about his dad. They asked all sorts of questions about his home; what it was like, what the people were like, the supernatural history that Beacon Hills seemed to be known for, and his favorite things to do there. Stiles realized that he hadn't thought that much about home in a while. 

After a while, and the three of them trading stories back and forth, Cedric and Luna came home. Different pack members came in and out of the kitchen bringing bags of food and other things in with them. Stiles tried to help but Luna gently told him that he didn't need to, that they would be able to get everything taken care of. Stiles didn't mind, after talking about home so much with the girls, he had thought of things that seemed to be things he now needed to think about some more. 

...

After talking about home for so long, Stiles realized it was probably time to go back. With the spell that the witches had placed, he was safe to go, and now that he didn't have Derek with him he was going to be lonely. He didn't want to keep traveling if it meant he had to do it by himself. He had done that for a while, and it had sucked. Now that he wasn't used to it, he knew that it was going to be even worse. 

Stiles thought about all the things that he had done, before and after meeting Derek. He thought about all the research he had done, all the people he had met. He thought about Carla and Ally and Brian (even though thinking about Brian made him want to throw up) and he thought about the Thomas pack and the witches. He thought about Derek and how he wished that the two of them had had more time together. Part of him even wished that Derek had found him years ago, when the two of them were little.

Then he thought more about his friends and his dad. He had talked to Deaton about them during his stay with the witches. The vet had told him that everyone was alive and well and there hadn't been any trouble since he had left. The omegas had left and they hadn't sent the alphas in as backup like they had said they were going to. And there hadn't been any new creatures to show up, so since Stiles had left, everyone had been living a normal life. That bit had hurt a little, and had made him think that maybe they were better off without him. Derek had taken him away from the vet almost immediately, claiming to have been able to see Stiles’s face fall, and he had wrapped the boy up in his arms and told him that no one was better off without him. Just because there had been no new threats in Beacon Hills since Stiles had left didn't mean that he was the reason that everything was so attracted to the town. It had taken a little while for Stiles to cheer back up, but eventually he had. The only way Derek would let him talk to Deaton about home after that had been if Stiles let Derek sit in on the conversation. Stiles really hadn't minded that. 

Stiles smiled at the memory even though he felt a little bad that now his dad would never be able to meet Derek. Even though he had been extremely nervous about having to go through the whole 'This is Derek Hale and he is my mate' conversation with his dad, he had been looking forward to everything that would have come after that. Even though it was different for humans, and Stiles didn't feel the mate connection like Derek did, he still wondered if he would be able to find someone that seemed so perfect for him, like Derek had. 

Stiles quickly made his decision, he was going to go home and he was going to see his dad and his friends. He grabbed up all of his stuff, which hadn't actually made it out of his bag other than the pajamas he had on. So he grabbed his bag and headed down the stairs to tell Luna and Cedric that he appreciated the fact that they had let him stay there again, and that they were willing to let him continue to stay there, but he needed to go home. He needed to go back to see his dad and get back into the swing of things at home, and he needed to see his friends. And since he was supposed to start college in the fall, he needed to start getting around for that. He planned on telling them that he would definitely be in contact, and maybe he would convince his friends to come and visit. He planned on telling them that he would miss them, and that he would always be grateful to them, but it was time for him to go home. 

Within half an hour, he was back on the road, heading toward Beacon Hills. The first thought he had had when he had gotten into the jeep was to call his dad and tell him the good news. The only thing that kept him from doing so was the fact that he wanted to surprise his dad by coming home and being able to tell him that he was fine and he could be home. So once again his phone was sitting in the passenger seat, seeming to glare at him and try to convince Stiles to pick it up and punch in the familiar number. 

Of course Stiles was able to show a little self-control and keep from doing so.


	17. Chapter 17

The thought of going home kept Stiles driving for a longer time than he probably should have been. He was ready to see his friends and his dad and sleep in his own room and visit the places around the town just because he could. Even though his eyes were burning and his eyelids were beginning to droop as he drove, he couldn't let himself stop, he had to keep going. 

Since he had left the Thomas pack, he had only stopped when his stomach had started growling continuously, and even then he had wanted to stay on the road. He was so consumed by the knowledge that he was going home, that he couldn't imagine stopping before he got there. 

Stopping to eat had proved uneventful. No one approached him, other than the waitresses since that was their job, no one threatened him, and no one seemed to even glance twice in his direction. He was unsure if that meant that the spell was working, or that there just wasn't any supernatural creatures in the restaurant. He believed it was the first one, partly because he wanted it to be true and partly because he had seen a few guys leaving as he had walked in and as they had started to fight, they had also started to get a little hairy. It was just a theory, what he thought about those men, but he was fairly certain he was right. It's not like he had had any trouble identifying werewolves in the past. 

When the men didn't immediately follow him through the restaurant doors, he knew he was safe, that the spell was doing its job and protecting him. 

When he got back on the road he was able to drive for another twenty miles, leaving him about twenty six miles away from Beacon Hills, before he had to stop again. This stop wasn't for any biological reason, he wasn't hungry and he wasn't about to fall asleep at the wheel, it was because his phone started ringing from its spot in the passenger seat. He looked over at it for a second, wondering if he was hearing things now that he was so close to home, but had to agree that he wasn't when he saw the brightened screen. A little surge of panic welled up inside him since he shouldn't be getting any kind of contact from anyone. 

So Stiles pulled over on the side of the road and picked up his phone. 

His panic was justified when he looked at the text, first noticing that the sender was Carla and then noticing the three digit number that was the entire message. The little '911' stared up at him, taunting him, as he remembered telling Carla to text that to him if she was in danger. His mind raced with what could be happening to her, even though he was 99.9% sure that the omegas were behind it, and what he was supposed to do. There was no way he could fight five omegas, and possibly a number of alphas, all by himself. 

With too much thought, Stiles punched in a familiar number, one that he had engrained in his head so far that not even months without thinking about it could make him forget it. With too much thought, Stiles punched in Scott's number and held his phone up to his ear, impatiently waiting for his friend to pick up. 

"Stiles?" Scott said as he picked up the phone, sounding extremely surprised. "What's going on?"

"I can't explain much right now but can you and the others and possibly the Argents meet me at that Costco that's about thirty miles out of Beacon Hills? The one my mom always insisted on going?"

"You mean the one that we got lost in for two hours when we were little?"

Stiles laughed a little, thinking about how freaked out their parents had been when they found the two young boys sitting at the bottom of one of the shelves. "Yeah, that one."

"Do you want me to bring your dad?"

"I'd prefer you didn't since I don't know what's going to happen, but I know he'll just force you into letting him come."

"Okay Stiles, I'll see you in a bit."

"See you."

Stiles felt glad that him and Scott hadn't gone through the whole I miss you thing yet, he didn't think he would have been able to handle it in this situation. Instead of thinking of what he wanted to say to Scott when he finally saw him again, he looked through his contacts and found a name that went with a person that he didn't know too well, but was sure would be up to helping with this. Knowing his group was going to need every bit of help they could get, Stiles called Ally. 

...

It wasn't until an hour later that everyone started showing up. Scott, Allison, Jackson, and Lydia all poured out of one car, thankfully not Jackson's Porsche, and were followed by Chris Argent and four other hunters getting out of one car, and the Sheriff getting out of the final one. Stiles couldn't help but go right to his dad and wrap his arms around him. 

The Sheriff clapped his hand on his sons back. "It's nice to see you again kid."

"You too dad," Stiles said back before letting go a moment later. 

"So what is it that you need us for Stiles?" Scott asked, holding onto Allison's hand. Stiles was glad that hadn't changed, and could see that Mr. Argents dislike toward the two of them dating hadn't changed either if his death ray eyes locked on Scott was any indication. 

Before Stiles could start talking, another car pulled up. Out of it came another girl with a determined look on her face. 

"Ally, you made it," Stiles said, knowing that he was receiving a few weird looks from the people around him. 

"I told you a while ago I would help you with whatever you needed."

"Thank you," he said, addressing the girl one more time before looking to the entire crowd.  "Everyone this is Ally, and she's a hunter. Maybe not as highly trained as the Argents, but trained. Okay well on this little journey of mine," Stiles started and paused when he heard a snicker come from where Jackson was standing. "I met a girl and we became quick friends. I moved in with her at her insistence and told her about what was going on before I left because I knew that the omegas would be able to tell that I had been there and I didn't want her unprepared. Anyway I told her to text me '911' if anything happened and that's the text I got a little while ago. We need to rescue her and I knew I couldn't do it alone."

"Thank god you didn't try," the Sheriff said, rolling his eyes. 

"I do have some common sense dad," Stiles exclaimed, looking at his dad like the traitor that he was. 

The Sheriff just smiled at his son and offered no apology. 

"It'll be easier to find her with you werewolves and I figured having the Argents come would be good manpower against the other werewolves. So you guys will help?"

Everyone around him nodded. 

"It would have been pretty stupid for us to come here if we hadnt planned on helping you Stilinski," Jackson said, rolling his eyes. 

Stiles gave a glare and turned to Scott. "You just had to bring him didn't you?"

Scott didn't even look fazed, as if he knew that question was going to come sooner or later, but he did have the decency to look a little apologetic. "He's good at tracking people," Scott said, sounding like he hoped that was a good enough excuse. 

Jackson smirked at that. 

"Okay, whatever, so now we need a plan," Stiles said, looking around, hoping that someone had some idea of what they should do. 

Stiles was thankful when it was Chris who started talking. 

"Well do you know where they're holding her, or are we going to an unknown building?"

"Unknown building," Stiles said, grimacing. 

"That does put us at a disadvantage since they'll know the place. They will know where everything leads, where the exits are, and where they will have the most advantage in a fight. How many are there?"

"There were five omegas but they said that there are also alphas and I'm assuming the alphas are going to be where we're going."

"But you don't know how many alphas there are?"

Stiles shook his head, wishing he had more information than he did. He would have felt better, both in the sense that he could feel like he was contributing something and that he would feel a bit safer, if he did. Not knowing what they were facing was a little disorienting, even though Chris was making it sound like they could easily work past the small amount of knowledge. 

"Right now we have seven highly trained werewolf hunters, a Sheriff armed with a gun loaded with wolfsbane bullets, two werewolves, and two human strategists," Chris said, looking around at the group of people and ticking each of them off on his fingers. He seemed more pleased with what they had than Stiles thought he was going to. 

"Actually," a new voice, that sent shivers down Stiles's spine before he even saw the face, said, "We have seven highly trained werewolf hunters, a Sheriff armed with a gun loaded with wolfsbane bullets, two beta werewolves, an alpha werewolf, a human, and a warlock."

Stiles whipped around as the last word was out of Derek's mouth. He felt a surge of emotion, but wasn't quite sure what it was. Mostly he was ecstatic that Derek wasn't dead, that he had survived the attack at the witches' house, and that he had managed to find his way back to Stiles. Then there was another part of him that was furious with the alpha because he had made no attempt to contact Stiles. The more rational part of Stiles' brain figured that Derek had probably lost his cell phone and decided he was going to focus on the surge of happiness. 

Without warning, to himself or Derek, Stiles ran to the other man and flung himself into Derek's arms.

"You aren't dead!" He exclaimed and then proceeded to repeat the words over and over again while Derek was rubbing his hand up and down Stiles's back, quietly whispering affirmatives in the younger man's ear. 

After about ten minutes, the Sheriff deemed it necessary to clear his throat, catching the attention of his son and the man that had readily taken his son into his arms. "Would you care to tell the rest of us who this man is?"

Derek walked over to the Sheriff and held his hand out. The Sheriff took Derek's hand, shaking it even though he had a suspicious look on his face. 

"I'm Derek Hale," Derek said, and everyone in the group except for Ally looked surprised. Everyone from Beacon Hills knew about what had happened to the Hales, and the Argents had a personal tie to the tragedy. "I'm dating your son."

Stiles felt extremely happy that Derek hadnt told his dad about the whole mates thing yet. That conversation was probably best saved until his dad didn't have a weapon that would actually be able to hurt Derek. _Although_ , Stiles thought, _now that he knows Derek and I are together he's probably going to be keeping the gun and the bullets._

The Sheriff nodded, shifting so that his gun was more apparent. Stiles panicked a little, remembering all the times he had had seen his dad do the same thing to criminals that he had to interrogate. He remembered the surveillance guy pointing it out the first time he had watched his dad in action and how the criminal had immediately picked it up. 

His first instinct was to watch Derek's face to see if anything changed, but he kept the same cool expression on his face. The alpha acted as if he was used to being shown guns that held a deadly bullet. 

"We'll have to talk more when all of this is over," the Sheriff said finally. "And you'll be coming over for Sunday dinner."

Stiles felt like he just wanted the earth to swallow him up at that point. Sunday dinner was going to be horrible and awkward. 

"Okay so now that we have a real consensus of who and what we have," Chris said, going back to the words Derek had said as his greeting. "We still have to plan what we are going to do. You don't happen to know anything about the werewolves we will be going up against, do you Mr. Hale?"

"Unfortunately I don't."

"Wait, you said there's a warlock in this group," Scott pointed out, using a facial expression that clearly said he knew Derek was wrong and he wasn't going to take his lies. 

"Yes I did," Derek said, nodding and then crossing his arms across his chest. 

"There isn't a warlock in this group."

"But there is Scott," Stiles said, knowing that if he didn't interfere this conversation wasn't going to go in positive directions. He could imagine Scott fighting Derek and none of them even making it out of the parking lot, let alone getting to where Carla was. "I'm a warlock. That was one of the reasons that the werewolves were after me in the first place."

Scott looked at Stiles with a calculating expression, obviously trying to decide if his best friend was lying to him or not. After a moment, he decided that Stiles wasn't. 

"Anyway," Chris said, looking more patient than Stiles thought he would have been. "We need to figure out what we're going to do. First we need to start tracking your friend so that we can get to her in time, before the werewolves decide to kill her. Since we don't know what they plan on doing with her the safest assumption is that they're using her as bait, but we don't know how long they plan on using her, and we don't know what they're going to do if we don't get there in time. Again, the safest assumption is that they will kill her if we don't get there in time."

"I know her scent, I can lead everyone," Derek said.

"Okay, werewolves will all go in one car together. Stiles can drive the werewolves. The rest of us will follow behind and we will keep in touch on coming up with a plan."

As Stiles got into the car with Scott, Derek, and Jackson, pushing Scott and Jackson into the backseat, he felt grateful that Chris had situated the cars how he had. Stiles needed time with Derek after thinking that he was dead. It didn't really matter if they were alone or they had two teenage, bickering werewolves in the back seat, and it didn't matter if Stiles was pretty sure Chris had only done it to keep Scott and Allison away from each other for a little while. He was just grateful that he could sit in the driver’s seat, holding Derek's hand in his as he drove, even if he was driving to save his friend from a group of werewolves who wanted to do who knew what with him.  

...

The official plan was decided as they drove, between texting and calling and bickering. The werewolves were all for just running in and getting the girl, but everyone else understood that what they were about to do had to be stealthy and had to be executed carefully. That was a main reason that they let Stiles help plan, but did not allow him to be part of the initial break in. He could help save the girl, but getting into the house had to be handled by the Argents. 

It was decided that all of the hunters would get into the closest position to the house as they could. Since they did not know the state of the place they were going, most of the finer details could not be planned until they were about to be done, but some guidelines had to be set. 

The first thing decided was that they would have to send someone to take a closer look at the place. One of the cars, as long as it wasn't the one with the three werewolves, was to drive past the place, taking in every detail possible and then relay it back to the others. If there was one story, everyone needed to know, if there were a lot of windows, everyone needed to know, if there were people walking around outside, everyone needed to know. Anything that could be useful in planning the details of the attack was something that everyone needed to know. After that, they could decide if they were going to blow out the windows and gas the house with a wolfsbane poison, or if they were going to send Stiles in as a "sacrifice" and use the distraction to get in, attack, and get Stiles and Carla. The second option was met with dislike and a strong hope that there was only one level and a lot of windows. 

The second thing decided was that unless they chose the second option, Stiles was to stay out of the fighting. 

"But I want to help," Stiles whined over the phone. His dad had called him after talking to Chris to tell him the decision. 

"There are enough people to get your friend out without getting injured, without you. These people are after you Stiles, you're the one they want and I'm sorry but I'm not willing to give you to them."

Stiles sighed, wanting to complain more but feeling unable now that his dad had said what he had. "Okay dad, I'll stay out of the fighting unless I am undeniably needed."

"Thank you Stiles."

"I love you dad."

"Love you too son."

Stiles ended the call and turned his full attention to the road. The other three in the car were trying to catch Carla's scent, Scott and Jackson had had to smell Stiles's suitcase to find a trace of the girls scent, and Stiles was trying to pretend that they hadnt heard the entire conversation. 

Derek squeezed Stiles's hand, catching his attention. "You know, if your dad hadn't told you that, I would have."

"You would have forced me to stay out of the fighting?"

"Yeah, you're too important and the other werewolves want you. If he hadn't pulled the not willing to lose you again card, I would have."

"But you get to fight and put yourself in danger? Do you remember that you just _died_ ," Stiles said, knowing that his argument was going to get him nowhere. It was more for a reason to argue about this, and to show Derek that he didn't want to lose him again either, that he kept up the useless fight. 

Derek raised an eyebrow at him. "I can heal faster than you can. If you got hurt as bad as I probably will, there would be no coming back from it. I'm telling you right now Stiles, I'm not willing to lose you okay, and I'm not going to. Those werewolves went after the wrong boy."

Stiles squeezed Derek's hand, feeling confident that everything would go according to plan. They would get Carla back, no one would get seriously injured or die, and then he and Derek could go back to Beacon Hills, and start figuring out how being mates was going to work.


	18. Chapter 18

After driving for a few hours, almost getting back to Carla's house, Derek had caught the girl's scent. Scott called Argent, Jackson called Lydia, and Stiles called his dad as Derek told him where they were going and the three on the phones relayed that information to the others. They had started to feel like they were never going to get anything, and had started giving out hopeful suggestions to why they couldn't get her scent, ones that would mean that they could all go home. 

"Maybe they realized that she wasn't good bait, and let her go."

"Maybe the text had been an accident and she isn't in any kind of trouble."

"Maybe they just decided to let her go with no reason behind it."

"Maybe someone else already found her and killed the omegas and took her to safety."

Everything was a maybe though, and everything could be shot down with less hopeful logic. Yes they all wanted to go home, but they all also understood how important it was to save Carla. Whether they knew her or not, they couldn't let the omegas kill an innocent girl when the only thing she had done was become friends with Stiles. And of course Stiles couldn't just leave her to die at their hands because that would be letting her down, and there was no way he could do that. 

After the phones were hung up and everyone knew just to follow Stiles, the car fell silent. Derek was still focusing in Carla's scent, and the others didn't want to mess with his concentration, but it was too quiet. The silence went on and on, roaring in Stiles's ears until he couldn't take it anymore, until he had to say something before he went insane. Maybe it had more to do with him being nervous about losing his friend, or possibly losing Derek again and had nothing to do with the silence, but those things couldn't be distinguished between in Stiles's mind. When the panic started seeping in, the reason behind it couldn't be obvious. 

"What happens if someone gets hurt?" Stiles asked, sounding like he was asking the whole car when really the question was directed at Derek and wasn't so much a what if someone gets hurt, but a what if _you_ get hurt. "What if someone gets hurt, someone who isn't a werewolf, and we can't leave to go to a hospital. Are we supposed to just keep going as someone who isn't a werewolf lies on the ground and bleeds out? And what about if we do get them to a hospital, what do we tell the people there? Do we use the usual animal attack excuse? Personally I am getting sick and tired of having to tell medically trained professionals that one of my friends is bleeding out and is suffering from numerous injuries because of an _animal attack_. I know we have to keep the whole werewolf thing under wraps and we can't go around telling people about them, but I am so sick and tired of having to make up some elaborate tale about an _animal attack_ just because one of my friends is hurt. And what about you werewolves? The only thing we can heal right now is wounds from a wolfsbane bullet, none of us can help you if you get hurt by an alpha and you just _aren't healing_. It's not like Deaton is here with us, we need to figure out what we are going to do about injuries."

Stiles finished his speech, sounding a bit breathless. Everyone thought he was done, that he would be okay now, but when he started mumbling to himself, his words blending together as they fell out of his mouth, they knew this was more than his normal rambling. 

Derek turned away from the window, still paying attention to Carla's scent to make sure they were still going in the right direction, but pushing it towards the back of his mind. His primary focus now, even though he was sure Stiles would hate it, was the younger boy in the driver’s seat. Derek laid his hand on Stiles's left hand, hiding how Stiles's knuckles were now white. "Stiles it's okay," he said, waiting for the boy to look over at him, even though it could only be for a brief second. When Stiles finally did, Derek smiled a little. "It'll be okay, alright? You're thinking about this far too much. All of the humans that cannot protect themselves are staying out of the fighting. We have the Argents, who will be able to stay far from the fight and still do maximum damage, and we have your dad and Ally who can do the same. They all have wolfsbane bullets loaded into their guns; they're going to be fine. And as for the werewolves, we don't know how much we'll even do because of all of the guns that will be trained against the others. We will get Carla out of there, and then we will go home safe and sound, okay?"

Stiles looked over at Derek again. He silently wished that he had been able to watch Derek as he had made his speech. He wished that he hadn’t been driving down the road, but parked somewhere instead. Even if it had been the side of the road, it would have been better. He would have been able to see the emotion that Derek had shown as he talked, even though it wasn't obvious to everyone. Only someone who had taken time to study Derek's facial expression would have known what he had put into that speech.  As it was, Scott and Jackson thought that Derek was just saying all that to get Stiles to calm down, not that he actually believed it. 

"Can you drive for a while?" Stiles asked after a moment, still driving as Derek rubbed the back of his hand. 

"We'll call the others and tell them that we're going to stop for a moment to change drivers," Scott said before Derek had said anything. 

Scott and Jackson were immediately on their phones, telling the other drivers what was going on. None of the phone calls lasted very long, no one stopped to chat for a moment, the calls were just we're stopping to switch drivers, some kind of assent, and then a call to the next person. Scott called Allison and Stiles's dad while Jackson called Argent. 

After hanging up the phone for the second time, Scott moved forward in his seat so his head was right next to Stiles's. "The first thing out of your dad’s mouth when I told him what was going on was 'the kid is letting someone else drive his Jeep?'"

"You don't normally let anyone drive your Jeep?" Derek asked.

Stiles shook his head, a red blush rapidly coating his cheeks. "Not normally no. I'm worried that someone else will hurt her."

Scott, having heard the same excuse millions of times, didn't even flinch, and surprisingly neither did Derek. Jackson on the other hand, laughed until he had to forcibly hold his cheeks down to stop them from hurting.

"I understand," Derek said, and then Stiles was pulling over onto the side of the road before anyone else could say anything. 

...

When they got close enough to the house where Derek was sure Carla was being kept, he told Stiles, Scott, and Jackson to get ahold of the other cars and tell them where they were. The Sheriff, Lydia, and Derek all parked their cars a few miles away, letting everyone stretch out their legs while Argent took the hunters, Allison, and Ally closer to the house. 

No one talked while the others were gone. No one wanted to miss the call that they were expecting from Argent, so they stayed silent, standing in a circle an thinking about what was going to happen. 

When Lydia's phone started ringing, Stiles jumped. Of course he had known it was coming, and whose phone was going to be receiving the call, but after standing in silence for fifteen minutes, the abrupt sound had startled him. Derek grabbed into his hand, eating the boys racing heartbeat, and held on as Lydia talked to Allison. 

"The plan without Stiles is the one we're going with. Argent said we got lucky with this one because everyone is inside and there are a few windows. Not as many as he wouldn't liked, but enough. The only problem is he doesn't know if there is a basement or not." Lydia paused, looking around the group. "Sheriff, Derek, Jackson, and Scott are to go to the house. When you get there, they're going to shoot through the windows and head inside. They're going to try to shoot as many of them as possible before you guys have to enter. Then the werewolves are going to find the girl, and try to get her out without hitting and kind of trouble. Allison and Ally will be with you three to try to shoot down any trouble."

Everyone nodded. The werewolves and the Sheriff got into the Sheriff's car, then leaving the two humans by themselves. 

...

The Argents got into the house easily, a few of them going through the open windows as quietly as possible. Of course they knew that the werewolves inside already knew they were there, but stealth still helped. One of the hunters opened the door for the others, so that no one else had to jump through the window and have to worry about getting scratched with pieces of broken glass. Once everyone was inside, the Argents led the way, holding their guns out in front of them, ready to shoot anyone that came at them. 

Two werewolves showed up when the group got to a door that seemed to lead downstairs. The two were down on the ground, groaning with the initial pain of the gunshot within seconds. 

The ground made their way down the stairs and met no one else until they were at the bottom of the stairs. The basement was completely open, showing that there were eight other werewolves. Two of the werewolves were standing in the back of the room, arms crossed over their chests, standing in front of Carla. Carla was bound and gagged, standing upright just by balancing against the wall. The other six werewolves advanced on the hunters and the other werewolves. 

The six hunters, who weren't Allison or Ally, opened fire on the werewolves while Derek, Jackson, Scott, Allison, and Ally made their way around the enemy sides and got to where Carla was. Allison and Ally started firing at the two werewolves before they were anywhere near the two to have hand to hand combat. Unlike the other werewolves, these two didn't fall the moment they were hit. Instead, they reached inside the bullet holes and grabbed the bullets out with their claws. The two looked completely unfazed. 

"They're alphas," Derek said, shifting immediately after. 

Jackson and Scott followed suit as Allison and Ally continued to shoot at the other two werewolves. They figured if they were riddled with enough wolfsbane, maybe they would be weaker. They didn't have to be weak, just weaker. 

When Derek, Scott, and Jackson got to the two alphas, they were ready to have to fight. They could see the bullet holes across their bodies, but the two large men hadnt fallen to the ground so they knew they were not weak enough yet. Immediately, they started to fight. 

Allison and Ally kept shooting, being careful to miss the werewolves that they had come with, as the three punched and scratched and pushed the two enemy alphas.

Eventually, the wolfsbane started to affect the two alphas and they couldn't fight back anymore. Eventually, they too gave up, leaving Carla to be taken away. 

As soon as the others noticed Derek had Carla in his arms, they began their retreat. The other werewolves, all three omegas and all three alphas, were on the ground groaning or dead. 

When the large group made it out of the house, no one was left to follow them. 

...

After getting Carla, everyone was adamant to get back home. Stiles and Derek drove Carla back to her house and surrounded the house with a line of mountain ash. They left after they promised to send her a jar so that she could renew the line when she needed to. 

They then stopped at Derek's aunt and uncle's house to pick up his things, which turned out to be some clothes and his car, and then headed back to The Costco where they had met up so that Ally could drive back to where she had been when she had gotten Stiles's text. 

Stiles once again gave up driving his Jeep so that he could stay in the same car as Derek. The Sheriff took the Jeep, Chris took the Sheriff's car, and everyone else was in the same cars as before. 

The moment Stiles got back to his own house, he felt like he could have wept. His journey had taken much too long, and he had been ready to be around his things since the moment he had seen the "you are now leaving Beacon Hills" sign all those months ago. All he wanted to do was take Derek up to his room with him and take a good long nap wrapped in the werewolf’s arms. The Sheriff had other plans though. 

"Why don't you boys take a shower, get some clean clothes on, and then we can leave?" He said, smirking at the two, calling them back from their tired trek up the stairs. 

Stiles turned around, looking at his dad in confusion. "What do you mean? We just got home, where else do we need to go?"

"It's Sunday Stiles."

Stiles groaned, now knowing exactly what his dad was talking about. "Can't we just go to sleep?"

"If you think I am going to let your boyfriend sleep here, in the same bed as you, before I get an explanation about what happened and what is really going on between you two, then I think we need to take you to a doctor before you take a nap."

"But dad-" Stiles started, immediately being silenced by a stern look from the Sheriff. "Fine, where are we going?"

"The diner, like usual," the Sheriff replied, and then walked out of the room. 

"Just so you know," Stiles said, making his way up the stairs, "This is going to be an interrogation. And you should probably thank your lucky stars that he's doing this at the diner instead of here."

"Why?" Derek asked, following Stiles as he got clothes from his bedroom and then walked into the bathroom. 

"Because the diner was my mom’s favorite place, so the place seems to have a calming effect on him."

"Noted," Derek said. 

The two took a quick shower, wishing they could take more time, and then got dressed. Stiles had grabbed himself a pair of jeans, and a Batman t-shirt, while Derek had grabbed the first things in his suit case: a pair of navy blue jeans and a cerulean blue t-shirt. When they got downstairs, the Sheriff was waiting for them, now dressed in a pair of faded blue jeans and a gray t-shirt. 

"You two ready to go?" He asked before Derek and Stiles were even at the bottom of the stairs. 

"Like we have any choice," Stiles grumbled. 

The Sheriff had obviously heard his son if the huff of breath was anything to go by. And if that wasn't, then the fact that the moment Stiles got close enough to him, the Sheriff pulled him into a tight embrace and then ruffled his hair. The Sheriff didn't let go until Stiles was practically out of breath, having laughed and yelled for his dad to stop. 

Derek stood back and watched the two with a gentle smile on his face.  

The three of them got into the car once again, the Sheriff driving, Stiles sitting in the passenger seat, and Derek sitting behind Stiles. The two Stilinski's bickered the entire ride there. 

Once their orders were placed, the Sheriff focused his attention on Derek. Derek started moving around in his seat just a little bit, not being used to all the scrutiny coming from one person to be solely directed at him. If it had been anyone else, maybe they wouldn't have noticed the movement, or maybe they would have thought that Derek was just moving in his seat so he could sit in a more comfortable position. But since it was the Sheriff and he had been trained to spot things like that on criminals, he knew just how uncomfortable Derek really was. And it made him glad that at least the boy wasn't going to try to be brave and act like this wasn't a big deal. 

"Since you're a werewolf, I highly doubt the relationship you have with my son is purely because you're dating. There's probably some higher thing going on that happens with all werewolves, and that I'm going to want to know eventually. Right now, I'm just going to get to know you as a person, forget that you are not human, and treat you like I would anyone else that Stiles decided to date. But I will tell you first that I do have the proper weapons to make sure I hurt you."

Derek nodded. "Okay sir."

The Sheriff smirked and turned his attentions to his son who was sitting in his seat next to Derek with his head in his hands. The Sheriff, and Derek, knew that if they could see Stiles's face there would be a bright red blush blossomed across his cheeks. "I like the manners this one has son," the Sheriff said, trying not to laugh. 

Stiles held his thumb up but didn't look up to see the Sheriff. 

Through the rest of dinner the three talked, but the conversation mainly revolved around Derek. The Sheriff wanted to know everything he could: what Derek's plans for the future was, what he had done after leaving Beacon Hills, what he expected from Stiles, and etc. After a while Stiles had stopped being so embarrassed and had managed to enjoy the meal too. After a whole, they all went back to the Stilinski's, the Sheriff only letting the two go up to Stiles's room after making them promise that no sex was going to ensue under his roof, while he was still in the house. 

That final comment caused Stiles to flop down on his bed, face first, the moment he got into his room. "Why does he have to be so embarrassing?" He groaned into the comforter. 

Derek sat down next to Stiles, rubbing his hand up and down the boys back. "He's just looking out for you," Derek said, laughing lightly. 

"I hope you know that I'm glaring at you right now."

Derek laughed a little louder this time. "I'll believe you.

It was silent for a moment as Stiles just enjoyed the light touch on his back, and Derek enjoyed just being with Stiles. Stiles eventually sat up though, opened his mouth to say something, and yawned instead.

"Why don't we go to bed?" Derek asked.

Stiles nodded, immediately getting off his bed to change into a different t-shirt and a pair of sweats. Derek did the same after Stiles pushed him into changing instead of watching him.

When they were finally lying in Stiles's bed, the lights off, and facing each other, Derek was thankful that he had better night vision than humans. That way he could see Stiles staring at him instead of looking at the slightly darker object that he knew was Stiles's face. That way he could watch as Stiles licked his lips, and he could count the miles on the boy’s face, and he could see Stiles's bright, honey colored eyes.

"I'm glad you found me," Stiles said, moving closer to Derek and wrapping his arm around the older man’s waist.

Derek wrapped his arms around Stiles and moved his head so it was right next to Stiles's ear. "I'm glad I found you too," he said, and then within minutes he was asleep, content with his intended mate’s arms around him. 


	19. Epilogue

**Three Years Later**

The first thing Stiles hears when he wakes up is a sharp knocking coming from the front door. He's still clad in a white t-shirt and flannel pajama pants, and hasn't had his coffee yet, but figures that if someone is going to show up at his house at death o'clock in the morning (otherwise known as ten o'clock) they would just have to deal with whatever mood he was in. 

When he opened the door and saw his dad standing there, he felt extremely glad. This way he wouldn't have to pretend to be cheerful before having his coffee. 

"Come on in dad," he said, turning around and walking toward the kitchen. "Do you want some coffee?"

The Sheriff sat down at the kitchen table and waited for his son to join him. When Stiles finally did he had two mugs of steaming coffee in his hands. 

"Are you ready for today?" The Sheriff asked after Stiles had taken a big gulp of his coffee. He figured his son would be more prepared to answer a question, especially a question like the one he had asked, if the caffeine was starting to work it's magic on Stiles's brain and body. 

Stiles nodded. "It feels less stressful than the wedding did," he said. 

The week before, Derek and Stiles had finally gotten married. The two of them had known for a long time that they were going to be together forever, even if the relationship had its ups and downs like every other relationship, and had decided to start their official forever with the human ceremony. It had been a big decision but since most of the people that they knew were human, and would be unable to join in on the werewolf ceremony, it had practically made itself. The two had spent many months with late night phone calls from Lydia, who was helping them plan the wedding, and long days spent putting the plans into motion. After all of that, planning the werewolf ceremony had been a piece of cake. 

"But are you ready for it?" The Sheriff asked, taking a drink of his own coffee and keeping a steady gaze on his son. 

"Of course I am dad. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know Stiles, but I know you and I know that sometimes you stress over things that should be less stressful."

"Thanks for worrying dad, but I'm fine. Derek and I already tied the knot in front of our whole family and all of our friends; this little gathering will be nothing."

"But this isn't just saying your vows and exchanging rings. To humans that means forever, and some still end it way before their forever is done. What you and Derek and doing today signifies what a marriage is supposed to, but for the two of you there is no backing out of this. There is no divorce, there is no separation."

Stiles looked at his father, holding the gaze the older man had been keeping on him since the beginning of his speech. "Are you trying to talk me out of this dad?" He asked with a cocked eyebrow and a grin. "I know you never really liked Derek-"

"I like Derek," the Sheriff interrupted. 

"-But this is a forever thing." Stiles went on, acting as if his dad had never said anything. "I know everything you were just saying. Derek has told me multiple times and he's had Deaton explain it multiple times, and of course I've done my own research. I know you care about me dad, but I want to do this."

The Sheriff shook his head, smiling. "It has been three years hasn't it? I guess you should know what you want."

"And I want this."

"And I'm sure you've told Derek this multiple times."

"He's started telling me to shut up every time it gets brought up."

"Then you two know what you're doing." The Sheriff paused, waiting to see if Stiles had anything more to add on the topic. When his son just took a drink of his coffee and stared at his dad, he knew the conversation was done. "Do you want to go get some breakfast? My treat?" The Sheriff asked. 

Stiles got a look on his face like he thought his dad would never ask. The Sheriff was suddenly taken back to when Stiles was still living at home, not married and not going through college, and would get the same look any time food was brought up, whether it was take out or a home cooked meal. 

"I'll go get dressed and we can head out then. Derek won't be back until later today so most of my day is clear," Stiles said, walking away even as the word flowed out of his mouth. 

"Where's Derek?" The Sheriff asked, raising his voice a bit since he had heard Stiles close a door. 

"He got called into work early this morning." These words were a bit muffled, because of the closed door, but the Sheriff had no trouble at all deciphering them. He had had a lot of practice with talking across the house, even when doors and walls were in the way, over the years because his wife had had and Stiles had the habit of keeping up a conversation even once they were out of ear shot. 

"I didn't even think about that. The storm last night must have really put the company back if they had to call him in. Isn't he using his vacation days right now so he doesn't have to go in?"

Stiles reappeared, changed out of the white t-shirt and pajama pants and into an old pair of jeans, a brown t-shirt, and a plaid button up, before he replied. "Yeah, I guess they had a lot of power outages last night and didn't have enough people working. Derek got the call when we were still asleep and was out the door ten minutes later. He wasn't too happy about it but he said that he told his boss that he has to be home by three and his boss is going to pay him for today and give him another vacation day."

"At least it didn't work out too bad."

"Yeah, well try telling that to a Derek who had to wake up at three a.m.  Believe me, it was not pretty."

The Sheriff laughed. "You're not much better when you're woken up."

Instead of saying anything, because he knew he was just as bad he just didn't get the glowing eyes, extra hair, or claws when he got angry, Stiles slipped on his shoes and walked toward the Sheriff's car. "Let’s get that food now, I'm starving."

The Sheriff laughed at his son and followed him out to the car. 

...

When Derek got home at three o'clock on the dot, he looked tired and possibly even grumpier than he had when he left that morning. Stiles was at the door to greet him, pressing a kiss to his cheek, because that was what he always did. He asked Derek how his day had gone, even though he knew just by how Derek looked that it hadn't gone well, and only got a grunt in reply. 

"I thought we were through with caveman speak?" Stiles asked, leading Derek into the kitchen where he had a steaming cup of coffee waiting for the man. 

Instead of answering, Derek practically fell into his chair and took a long drink of his coffee. He made a deeply satisfied noise after drinking half of the cup. 

"Was it that bad?" Stiles said, sitting in the chair opposite of his husband. 

"Yeah, most of the town is out of power, and most of the surrounding towns are out of power. If I hadn't told my boss that I needed to be home by three I probably would have been sent out again."

"Are they going to be able to get everyone's power back?" 

"Yeah, it's just going to take a few days."

Stiles nodded. "You could probably take a nap if you want to. We don't have to leave until six."

Derek stretched his arms above his head and nodded. "I think I will," he replied, his exhaustion being accented by a yawn. 

Before he left the room, Derek walked over to Stiles and kissed his cheek. "Wake me up at five," he told his husband, "And I'll make something for us to eat."

"You won't be very hungry for later though," Stiles said to Derek's retreating back. 

"We can bring the catch home then," Derek replied. 

Even though Stiles couldn't see his husbands face, he knew the man was smiling. _He thinks he's so funny,_ Stiles thought, glaring at the bedroom door that Derek had just shut. _He definitely isn't though, there is no way were bringing "the catch" home tonight._

"You better plan on eating it," Stiles said out loud this time, knowing that Derek could hear him. 

Sure enough, Stiles heard Derek laugh from their bedroom. 

...

The people gathered on the Hale property were close friends who knew the secret of what Derek and Stiles really meant to each other. It included Stiles's dad, Scott's mom, Derek's aunt, uncle, and some other relatives, packs that were allied with Derek, including most of the Thomas pack, all of Stiles's friends from Beacon Hills, Ally, and Carla. Most of them had been around since the very beginning of Stiles and Derek's relationship, and were glad to finally see the couple completing their bond. The humans that had been invited to their wedding the week before had thought that would be the end for the two, and hoped that they would be together forever the way one always does at a wedding, and never could have imagined that a week later they would be completing the bond that would really ensure their future together. 

As was custom for this event, Derek and Stiles were the last to arrive. The two of them showed up, wearing the suits they had worn for their wedding, to see a larger group of people than either of them had been expecting. They knew how many people they had invited, but had not thought that all of them would want to show up. 

"Alright boys," Scott's mom said after walking up to the two of them and giving them both a tight hug, "What do we need to do?”

"You guys don't really need to do anything. For you guys this will mainly be a lot of waiting."

"Then it's a good thing we all brought things to sit on." With one last, bright smile, Melissa walked back to join the crowd. 

After explaining to everyone how they would be doing a lot of waiting, and getting a groan or two (thank you Scott and Jackson), everyone set out to spread out blankets or sleeping bags or foldable chairs. Stiles and Derek on the other hand, stood watching and waiting until everyone was comfortable. 

"If you guys don't mind, I think we're going to get this show on the road," Stiles said when everyone was either sitting or lying. 

The two of them took their places at the edge of the clearing. For this ceremony they were to hold hands until Derek caught a scent of the animal that he thought was the best for the two of them. After Derek acquired the scent the two would remove their clothes, and give them to someone so they wouldn't just be lying on the dirty ground, and take off after the animal. Derek had the choice to either stay fully human or partially transform, as long as Stiles could keep him in his sight. The two would run through the woods until Derek caught the animal he had chosen so that he could kill it and offer it to Stiles as a symbol of the instinctual side of their bond. Once that was done the two of them would travel back to where their family and friends were waiting and then they would all go home. No one expected the ceremony to end until early the next morning. 

Stiles took the werewolf’s hands in his own and watched as he silently searched for his prey. The moment Derek found what he wanted, Stiles knew. He knew because of the tiny twitch of Derek's nose that meant he had caught a scent that he liked, and he knew because all of a sudden Derek was looking at him with red eyes instead of green. Without wasting any time, the two started stripping out of their clothes. Stiles felt a little weird as the two of them ran away because he knew that everyone that was still seated in that clearing had, at the very least, a perfect view of his ass. He didn't even want to think about what they had seen at the very most. 

As these thoughts flitted through his mind, Stiles managed to keep Derek in his sights. He didn't know if the werewolf had let his transformation through or if he had managed to stay somewhat human, all he knew was that Derek had the scent locked and he was ready to find the thing. That thought made Stiles realize that he also didn't know what kind of animal Derek had chosen for the two of them. He hoped at the least it was something that was somewhat edible. 

A few hours later, and a few breaks, the two of them finally caught up to their prey. When Stiles saw that Derek had chosen a rabbit he had felt equally happy and devastated at the same time. On one hand Derek had chosen an animal that was edible and that could probably still be eaten when they got home (because apparently after you kill it you have to eat it, all of it) and on the other hand Derek had chosen a cute little brown rabbit that probably had a family. When Derek picked it up, Stiles looked away. He thought maybe if he didn't have to see it die, he wouldn't have a moral crisis before eating it. 

Both of them took a bite of the rabbit after Derek had cleaned the fur off and had rinsed it in a conveniently placed river, although Stiles's was quite a bit smaller than Derek's. 

"Are you going to be able to walk back?" Derek asked, watching Stiles as his mate swayed ever so slightly and his eyes jerked awake every few seconds. 

"Yeah, I'll be fine," Stiles said. As soon as the words left his lips a yawn worked its way out too. This yawn had Stiles squeezing his eyes shut and keeping his mouth open long enough that he probably could have caught quite a few bugs if he hadn't had his hand covering his mouth. 

Derek walked right up next to Stiles and grabbed the younger man’s hands and arranged them so that Stiles was holding into Derek's neck. Derek then placed his hands under Stiles's knees and picked him up bridal style. Even though Derek had been expecting Stiles to pitch a fit the second he even tried to pick him up, the human hadn't even tried. Instead, he just hung on and fell asleep as he listened to the steady beat of Derek's heart against his ear. 

...

When Derek walked into the clearing where everyone was waiting, he found that he was the only one that was still awake. Stiles was still passed out in his arms and everyone who had come for the ceremony was sprawled out on the ground, blankets, or chairs. Instead of trying to wake everyone up, Derek just put Stiles down gently, grabbed a few blankets from his car for the two of them to sleep on, and then positioned the two of them on the blankets so that they would both be comfortable and warm. With Stiles cuddled up next to him, and the knowledge that their bond was almost entirely complete, Derek found it easy to fall asleep the moment his head hit the ground. 

...

Derek was the first to wake up a few hours later. The first thing he did was get back into his car and grab out the extra clothes he and Stiles had packed. When he was fully dressed in his normal attire, he grabbed the clothes that were packed for Stiles and took them over to his husband. Stiles was still asleep, wrapped up in his blanket and curled into a little ball, and even though Derek knew Stiles was not going to be happy when he was awake, he also knew that the human would not like to wake up after everyone else and have to get dressed in front of them.

"Hey Stiles," Derek said, gently shaking the boy. "You need to wake up so you can get dressed."

Stiles groaned, which was something that Derek had been prepared for. "You don't want to have to get dressed once everyone else is awake do you?" He asked, continuing to shake Stiles's shoulder. 

With another groan, Stiles opened his eyes just enough so he could see where Derek was. Once he had located the werewolf, his eyes went closed again. He sat up and put his hands up in the air, silently telling Derek to put his clothes on for him. Derek rolled his eyes, an action which Stiles missed, but put the shirt over Stiles's head anyway. Somehow, he got the younger man into a standing position and got his underwear, jeans, socks, and shoes on. Getting Stiles's bottom half dressed was a bit harder since he still refused to open his eyes and his balance was off because of that and the fact that he was still so tired. As soon as the clothes were on, Derek helped Stiles back into their makeshift bed and waited as the human quickly fell back to sleep. 

...

The next morning, Derek was the first to wake up. A few moments later, before he had moved from his spot curled around Stiles, he became extremely glad that he had thought to get dressed before going to sleep again since moments after he awoke the others began waking up themselves. Even with people walking around, taking care of the things they had slept on, Stiles was the last to wake up. The last thing everyone did in the clearing was congratulate Derek and Stiles on their bond. 

"I guess we can go home and finish this," Derek said as he and Stiles watched the last car of people drive away. 

Stiles looked up at Derek and wiggled his eyebrows. "So we finally get to do the fun part of this?" He asked. 

"Hasn't all of this been fun?" Derek asked, a hint of teasing making its way into his voice. 

Stiles yawned. "Of course but this part is going to be the _most_ fun."

"Not like we haven't done it before."

"But this has _meaning_ Derek."

"Alright Stiles, you're right."

"Damn right I am."

Derek laughed, tugging Stiles over to their car. "Since you're so right we better get to the most important part."

The two of them got to the house quickly, not wanting to waste any time even at the early hour of the morning. They stopped long enough to eat breakfast, consisting of two bowls of cereal and two pieces of toast covered in strawberry jelly each. After that, they made a beeline for the bedroom. 

"You know it doesn't have to be done this way?" Derek asked, pushing Stiles down onto their king sized bed. 

"What do you mean? Are you saying that we don't have to have sex to finish our bond? Well I beg to differ, I don't care if we don't _have_ to have sex to finish this, we are having sex because sex is good," Stiles said, watching as Derek took his own shirt off and manhandled Stiles's off too. 

"You know I love it when you manhandle me," the human said, laughing as Derek removed his jeans, socks, and boxers. 

Derek removed his own clothes and straddled Stiles's waist. Stiles looked up at him with a cocked eyebrow and a smirk.

"Ready?" Derek asked, watching Stiles. 

"Yup," Stiles replied, tilting his head to one side just a little to give Derek a bit better access to his neck. 

Derek leaned down, pressing most of his body against Stiles so that the two of them were practically one person. He nosed along Stiles's jawline as the younger man bellow him squirmed just a little. Keeping up what he was doing, Derek waited until Stiles's squirming got worse. He knew when his mate started to squirm, really squirm, that that was when he needed to do something more. So when Stiles's squirming got to the point where he was moving his entire body away from Derek, the werewolf bit down at the juncture between Stiles's shoulder and his neck. 

Stiles let out a moan, and Derek bit down just a little bit harder, making his fangs go just below Stiles's first layer of skin. The depth was enough to change Stiles if that was Derek's intent, so the depth was just enough to complete their bond.

As Derek sank his teeth into Stiles's skin and made sure his intent was to complete their bond, the two could feel the change in their relationship. They could feel a tightening in their guts that seemed to pull them closer to the other. They could feel the others presence at the very back of their minds, vague but there. They knew now that finally after the last three years, they had come to the end of one journey, and to the beginning of another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end of the story, which is kinda sad. I'm so happy that I finished it, and that I got to share it with you guys, but it's weird to think that it's done. Anyway, I'm thankful for all of you who read it, commented on it, left kudos, bookmarked it, or subscribed to it. All of that means so much to me. 
> 
> Here's my [ Tumblr ](13luckystars.tumblr.com%20) if any of you would like to come say hi :)
> 
> Again, thank you.


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